


write your injuries in dust

by badacts



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Varying Levels of Angst, Whumptober 2018, and humour, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 21,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: It's WHUMPTOBER.Or, Clint and Bucky get themselves in trouble a lot - perils of the superhero lifestyle. Some kinds of trouble are more serious than others.





	1. stabbed

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to do Whumptober for winterhawk! I swear it's not because I like beating up Hawkeye (probably).
> 
> Each fill will have the appropriate warnings. 
> 
> Day 1 prompt: stabbed.
> 
> Warnings: non-graphic violence.

The biggest difference between working with a team then and working with one now is communications. Bucky, who mostly used to rely on a set of complex and occasionally stupid hand gestures viewed through a rifle scope, now has voices in his ear instead. 

It’s both better and worse.

“Ow!” Clint exclaims, a pitched clear sound over the usual battle-brief comments and commands. Bucky stops himself from looking in that direction through force of will only.

“Hawkeye, report,” Steve says, echoed by the clang of the shield off of something’s skull. Dinosaurs in New York City - sometimes Bucky wishes he was still a glorified ice cube.

“Stubbed my toe,” Clint replies. “I’ve got company. Not for long, though.”

“Company like human company?” Stark asks. This time Bucky  _ does _ look away from his scope, glancing across rooftops to Clint’s perch to the north.

He finds Clint, who has his bow in one hand and the other clamped to his side, just in time to see him take a kick to the chest that drops him.

“Iron Man, Hawkeye needs support,” Bucky says before his mind even really catches up with the wrongness of Hawkeye felled by one kick. Clint, despite his general air of clumsy incompetence, is a hand-to-hand specialist who shouldn’t be knocked over by someone in a white coat.

“Buck!” This from Clint, winded but still offended, even as Stark’s, “Kind of busy, gimme a minute,” nearly drowns him out. A few blocks down, there’s an explosion. 

“Two minutes,” Stark corrects himself. “Maybe three.” 

It’s too long. Bucky says, “I’m going.”

The downside of modern communication devices is that Bucky has to listen to the sudden vocal disapproval of the entire team at this change in plan. On the other hand, he can just take the earpiece out. He doesn’t, but he  _ could.  _ Instead, he focuses on his path towards Clint’s position north of him.

The next building is lower than his but close enough it’s an easy jump. He takes it at a dead run, rolling on landing right back onto his feet. It doesn’t feel right doing it without a parkour joke from Hawkeye in his ear, though. Hawkeye, who is busy getting his ass handed to him by one guy.

“Hawkeye, report,” Steve repeats, and then when he doesn’t get an answer, “Clint. Talk.”

“Ah,” Clint says, and then nothing else. It’s as much of an admission as they’re going to get.

“Soldier, go.” It’s amazing how quickly Steve can change his tune where necessary.

“I’m going.” It’s one of the rare moments where Bucky wishes Hydra had given him less super strength and more aerodynamism. Or maybe straight-up-and-down flight.

Just as he thinks that, there’s a roar from behind him, and hands grab hard at the harness on his back. Bucky’s stomach drops, and he manages to stop himself from thrashing just in time for Falcon to say, “Need a lift?”

“Fuck you, asshole,” Bucky replies, more out of habit than anything else. No one calls him on it, which is a pleasant change. Then again, they all know how he feels about surprise flight. 

“Mean,” Sam says. He sounds pretty chipper for someone Bucky is going to punch later. “I got science-guy, you get Hawkeye.”

Bucky may have to hold back on the punching, because Sam’s wings do get them to Hawkeye quick. Sam counts, “Three - two -” and then lets go.

Bucky, travelling too fast for a normal human to land without breaking in two, takes the brunt of the landing on his metal shoulder and then rolls again. He looks up in time to see Sam, who hasn’t paused, collect the man in the white coat right and soaring over the edge of the building and down.

Over Sam’s earpiece, Bucky hears a surprised shriek.

Clint was upright again, but at the sight of Bucky he crouches down and then slumps. Bucky, who had held off even a trace of fear until now, feels his heart rate trip faster in his chest. He scrambles across the roof to his felled - whatever.

Of course, when he skids to a halt at Clint’s side, Clint grins up at him. “Oh, hey, Buck. Good timing.”

“No thanks to you,” Bucky replies, pulling Clint’s hand off of his side to get a look. Then he puts his knee there instead and presses. Hard.

Clint thrashes. “Fuck!”

“Don’t bother,” Bucky warns. “Cap, Hawkeye needs a medic.”

“Status?”

“Stabbed,” Bucky replies. “Not fatally.”

“It’s not bad,” Clint says, and then squeaks when Bucky presses harder. “Uncle, uncle!”

“Would you prefer to bleed out?” Bucky asks through his teeth.

“It’s  _ not _ that bad.”

“Stop talking,” Bucky recommends. Steve sighs and audibly hits another dinosaur.

 

* * *

It turns out that the guy in the white coat was the creator of the dinosaurs. He’d taken offence to them destroying said dinosaurs and gone for the closest target with a knife and a surprisingly good roundhouse kick.

There was something about a plan to return New York to it’s ‘original state’, or something like that. Bucky determinedly doesn’t care about any of it from Clint’s bedside, if only because Clint finds the entire premise hilarious.

“The punishment does not fit the crime,” Clint informs him sullenly. 

Bucky, who is reading a tattered home decor magazine he picked up from the waiting room, ignores this.

“I want to know about this dude’s plot to fill New York with dinosaurs,” Clint continues. “I mostly want to know whether he considered that the people of lower Manhattan would absolutely cause the second dinosaur extinction. Lotta suppressed rage there, that’s all I’m saying.”

Bucky still doesn’t answer. He thinks his silence says exactly how not-funny he finds the idea of Clint getting killed by a  _ deranged lizard scientist. _

“I’ll settle for you telling me the latest fall colour schemes,” Clint concedes after a moment. Bucky rewards him by letting Clint hold his hand while he reads.


	2. bloody hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm starting out really easy by leaning on the comfort part of hurt/comfort but do not let this fool you because there's GONNA be angst.
> 
> (Probably)
> 
> Warnings: nightmares, PTSD symptoms

It shouldn’t bother him.

He’s dealt in enough blood for several lifetimes - enough of it to drown in. And yeah, maybe he wasn’t the one holding the reins, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t the one who did it. 

“Hey,” Clint says from behind him, sleep-soft. “Bucky?”

Bucky glances up at him in the mirror, avoiding his own eyes. “I gotta-”

“Okay.” Clint slips through the door and gently hip-checks Bucky to make room for himself at the sink. “Let me?”

Bucky doesn’t answer, but he also doesn’t protest when Clint squeezes soap into his palm and takes one of Bucky’s hands in his own to wash. He closes his eyes, breathes.

Clint’s fingers are calloused and familiar, strong and warm-skinned. There’s a pause when he adjusts the water from bright-cold to actually tolerable. Then he asks, “You been dreaming?”

“Remembering,” Bucky corrects very quietly. 

His memory is a double-edged sword, even now, and he doubts it will ever stop. It’s okay, most of the time. The thing about guilt is that you learn to live with it, the same as with pain - heavy, unignorable, hurting, but survivable. 

It’s the aftermath he hates, bone-weary and sick of himself, pallid and red-eyed like he’s been crying in his sleep. Hell, he might have been. 

It’s the sensation of his hands being blood-wet, and his eyes lying to him and seeing crimson, crimson, crimson. 

Clint swaps to the other hand, humming acknowledgement. His shoulder is overlapping Bucky’s, and he leans his chin onto Bucky’s shoulder. Then, once he’s run Bucky’s hands under the tap one last time, he turns it off.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Clint says, but Bucky needs to see, so he ignores him. 

“Clean,” he notes, unsurprised but still relieved. 

“Yeah,” Clint says, and fastidiously pats both Bucky’s hands dry. The flesh one is wrinkled with the water and red over the knuckles, which fits. Bucky doesn’t know how long he was scrubbing before Clint took over. Either way, it won’t last. “You’re good.”

Bucky huffs a half-laugh despite himself. “Wouldn’t go that far.”

Clint shuffles himself behind Bucky more completely, arms curling around his hips and over his belly, pressing them cheek to cheek. “I would.”

Simple words for simple creatures, and Bucky does mean the both of them. It’s the simplicity that rocks him, the same way it always does - that, and Clint’s belief that the words are true.

There’s nobody he trusts to be truthful more than Clint - not even Steve. No one he trusts more with his memory and his tricky-brain-bullshit. It works, because he doesn’t trust anyone else with Clint’s everything more than he does himself.

“Bed,” Bucky says, sinking his weight back into Clint’s and knowing he’ll be held up. That, or that Clint will go down with him. 

Either way, he’ll take it.

Clint, as ever, grins, the mirror catching the outer curve of it where it’s not pressed to Bucky’s cheek. He mutters, “Always an order I can get behind,” because he can’t resist, even if he really just means the warm curve of their bodies together and attempting a little more sleep. 

They started with guilt as their shared language and burden, and built their way up from there to here. And these days, they’re mostly doing better than just surviving it.


	3. insomnia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late!!! Sorry but I had to birth a baby horse and got no sleep yesterday, but I'll catch up tomorrow :D
> 
> This is like barely whump it's just straight up fluff lmao.

Clint finds insomnia super boring.

Sure, he has his fair share of nightmares. Maybe more than his fair share? He’s been dreaming about his shitty dad since he was a little kid, so, maybe. The thing is, his worst nightmares come when he doesn’t expect it, when he’s so exhausted or, worse, so content that he falls into deep slumber and then into bad dreams.

When he can’t sleep, he just...can’t sleep. Sometimes he rolls around in bed and messes with his phone for a bit, but usually this doesn’t get a kind and accepting response, so he mostly gets up and heads to the couch. Late night TV is terrible, but mostly he just stares at the muted screen and contemplates his existence anyway, so it’s no big.

More than anything, it’s annoying. His body feels fatigued, but his mind is just too busy to let him rest. Also, even when he does fall asleep, it’s inevitably not for long enough, and he wakes up feeling like hot trash.

He’s midway through an infomercial for some kind of complicated vegetable slicer when there’s movement in his peripheral vision.

“I’m deaf,” Clint warns, but Bucky isn’t talking anyway. He looks angry, but Clint knows well enough that the scowl is all tension pulling the lines of his face downwards. That expression used to make Clint nervous, but now it just makes him sad.

It’s the dreams that get to Bucky, and he deserves better than all those memories of things his body did while he wasn’t in control.

Bucky moves towards the couch and then pauses like he’s rethinking the plan. The blue-glow of the TV screen catches his eyes, showing them as a touch too shiny. Clint _aches,_ especially when Bucky starts to backtrack to the bedroom.

It’s not that they’re private with their emotions between the two of them - it’s that Bucky is achingly aware of burdening other people, even when it’s not a burden, or at least not one Clint wouldn’t snatch from him to carry if he could.

“Buck,” he says, and is gratified when Bucky stops, even if he doesn’t turn back. Their whole thing is meeting in the middle. That’s why Clint pushes himself up and goes to him.

He plasters himself to Bucky’s back, cheek ducked against his shoulder, and holds on. Bucky doesn’t move to hold him back, but it’s enough that he doesn’t move at all.

It’s a long quiet wait before Bucky’s hand covers Clint’s on his belly, and his chest rumbles with speech that Clint can’t make out. When Clint taps at him with his free hand, he turns and hugs Clint around the shoulders, saying right into his slightly-less-deaf ear, “Shoulda just let you stay and play Candy Crush.”

Clint is two thousand levels into the Candy Kingdom, and Bucky can suck it. “I’m gonna remind you of this moment next time you kick me out of bed.”

“I just bet you will.”

Clint loves it when Bucky sounds like Bucky. “Want to watch some infomercials with me?”

Bucky nods, his cheek to Clint’s, but doesn’t let Clint go for a long moment. When he does, Clint leads him to the couch. Usually when they share the couch Bucky acts like some kind of overprotective and overly hot blanket, plastering himself to Clint, but today he folds himself into the corner and pulls Clint almost into his lap. Clint ends up with his head against Bucky’s shoulder, feeling the soft bump of his heart against his cheek.

He’s still not sleepy, and Bucky might not sleep again tonight. But they’re together, and safe.


	4. "no, stop!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence and pain and bad arm-related stuff.

Clint is all bared teeth, noise and fire. “Don’t you fucking  _ dare-” _

All it earns him is a open-palmed slap across the face. He’s here as collateral only, incentive for Bucky to go quietly, and now that they’ve got Bucky where they want him all they care about is Clint staying where he’s been put. They’re not going to hurt him - kill him, maybe, but not hurt him.

Bucky, though - him they’re going to hurt. Not out of pleasure, just necessity, or at least their version of it. Not that he’s going to care about that in a couple of minutes.

The thing about his fancy Wakandan arm is that the clever neural technology means that, rather than just pressure, he gets sensation from it almost like it’s a real arm. Not pain, or at least not on a surface level - it wouldn’t work well as a shield if his ‘skin’ was sensate that way, but everything else he can feel - including pain receptors under the skin to indicate serious damage. Also, the link-up means it’s an unremovable implant, not a nifty prosthetic he could take off and hand over to these assholes.

Correction: it’s unremovable unless you have access to an industrial saw. 

Well, probably. They haven’t tried yet, but whether it works or not Bucky suspects it’s going to hurt.

Bucky is held down, but he wouldn’t fight that if he could while Clint is here and vulnerable. Clint hasn’t received that memo - over the sounds of machines moving and running, Bucky can hear the bark of him cursing their captors out.

Bucky throws him a look, and it  _ hurts _ to see him like that, restrained and fighting and afraid under it where only Bucky can see it. Well, Bucky had warned him way back when that hitching his cart to Bucky’s was a surefire way to get his heart broken. He knew he was gonna prove himself right eventually.

Clint’s eyes meet his, and he’s begging Bucky to fight, to free himself. He doesn’t get that that’s impossible. The sawblade, as it lowers, blurs silver with speed.

Bucky closes his eyes. It doesn’t help much.

The blade bites through his metal skin faster than he thought it would, his brain screaming  _ pressure-pressure-pressure _ before it gives and translates as  _ pain _ . Maybe not as much as it would in his flesh arm, but it’s enough. 

Behind his eyelids, everything blooms red. He screams.

“No, stop!” Clint yells, barely audible over the sound of rending metal. “Bucky!” 

There’s no response at all, and the next sound Bucky hears from Clint is a wrenching, teeth-gritted shout of pure frustration. Bucky is biting everything back, but half of him wants to beg Clint to be quiet because it’s not making this better.

Then, the wall across the room explodes, and there’s the familiar whine of repulsors pitched over everything else.

Bucky doesn’t stay conscious long enough for the saw to shut off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to say you can find me on [tumblr](http://badacts.tumblr.com/) :)


	5. poisoned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CATCHING UP.
> 
> I like this one - excuse any mistakes, my eyeballs are SUPER dry because it's LATE.
> 
> Warning for, you guessed it, poisoning.

It was meant for Bucky. That’s what he can’t stop thinking.

Clint slipped the glass of champagne from Bucky’s hand, winked, and then took a sip. It was all rakish charm, him flirting for someone he’d already won over even if he didn’t know it, and Bucky liked it even if he thought it would never go anywhere.

He didn’t want this - this sinking terrible certainty that it’s never going to go anywhere not because Clint is oblivious, but because Clint is going to die.

“It was strychnine,” Bruce explains without looking up from his tablet. He’s wearing the remains of a suit, the same as Bucky, sleeves rolled up. “There’s no specific antidote, just supportive treatment. Really, he has a better chance than you would have with your metabolism.”

“Poison kills me the same as anyone else,” Bucky says through his teeth, feeling a sense-memory of being injected with anti-venom for a snake bite he’d gotten in some desert mid-mission shiver over him.

Bruce looks up at that. His expression turns from businesslike to sympathetic. “You caught it early. You gave him the best chance possible.”

That’s not saying much. The Winter Soldier never worked with poison - that kind of subtlety wasn’t his MO - but in that sense strychnine barely counts. It’s the most obvious of poisons, and it was kind of hard to miss when Clint started to have a conscious seizure.

“If he makes it through the next twelve hours, his prognosis will be good,” Bruce continues when it becomes clear Bucky isn’t going to speak. “He’s in the best hands. I know waiting is hard-”

“Thanks,” Bucky cuts him off, because  _ Jesus Christ _ he does not need this man’s sympathy.

Bruce adjusts his glasses but otherwise takes Bucky’s sharpness without a twitch. “You can sit with him if you like. Just be quiet - stimulation for him at this point makes it more likely he’ll seize.”

“I’m going to,” Bucky begins, and then just shuts his mouth and leaves. The last place he should be is at Clint’s bedside. That’s for Natasha, or would be if Natasha wasn’t currently questioning a would-be assassin chasing the scalp of the famed Winter Soldier.

The questioning is happening down a couple of floors from the medical ward, and that’s where Bucky’s feet take him. He slips silently into the observation room, staying by the door. In front of the one-way window, Steve is standing at ease, arms crossed and stance broad. Through the window, Natasha is sitting across the table from a weaselly young man and speaking in rapid French.

Bucky understands more French than he speaks, but the conversation makes him wish he didn’t. This is just a head-hunter with a little bit of skill and more than a little luck, hitting them close to home where they should have been safe. No grudge against the assassin, no real motive beyond wanting to prove he could. Bucky thinks if he was the one who had been poisoned he could stand here and listen to it and not feel much of anything.

As it is, his metal hand makes an audible grinding noise as it forms a fist. Steve jerks a little at the sound and turns.

When he sees Bucky, his expression turns soft. Bucky wants to smack it off of his face, because none of them are meant to know, or at least acknowledge, that he might take this as a blow, and because it’s Clint in particular.

Fuck it. Maybe he just wants to hit something. He’d like to go through that window and reduce that little twerp to paste, but he knows Steve would stop him with some bullshit about him regretting it later. He might be right, but fuck him too.

Bucky’s out. He turns tail and heads - away.

He’s three steps out of the room when he realises he doesn’t really have anywhere to go. His rooms will be too empty, and the people he usually seeks out he either can’t stand to be near right now or are lying in a hospital bed because they got caught in the crossfire.

It’s too much. He punches the wall, the only fragment of his restraint that he hits it with his flesh hand. His knuckles split. There’s no major structural damage. He wants there to be.

_ Fuck _ , he thinks, and then too-strong hands clamp onto his upper arms and drag him back.

“Whoa, Buck,” Steve says, too soft and too understanding, but at least he doesn’t let go when the teeth-clenched scream finally wrenches itself out of Bucky’s throat.


	6. betrayed

It’s really hard to have Captain America standing in front of you, arms crossed, his expression getting steadily more impatient. Clint would make a dad joke, but all of those seem in bad taste, considering. 

Bucky seems unperturbed, but Clint totally knows it’s a ruse. Bucky is way more susceptible to Steve’s disapproving face than he pretends to be.

“I don’t have all day,” Steve rumbles, and actually taps his booted toes on the floor.

“Neither do I,” Clint counters. “We were gonna go get donuts and you know the good shop closes at three-”

This does not improve Steve’s expression. “Then you better start talking.”

“...what about?” Clint checks, because he’s pretty sure he knows, but Steve has a habit of standing around looked annoyed until you blurt all your sins out to him, and Clint really doesn’t want to incriminate himself unnecessarily.

“Ignoring post-mission protocols,” Steve says, “Like skipping out on going to medical. Does that ring any bells?”

Well. Clint was right. Face smooth - what, he’s a spy, he can keep his expression clear - he says, “I thought that was only if we got hurt, Cap.”

“You’re wrong and you know it. But also, I’m sure you mean hurt as in how you yelled, ‘ow, shit, that hurt’, on comms yesterday?”

Busted. Clint considers this, and then rallies with, “You know how sometimes you say ‘ow’ when you’re surprised even if it doesn’t actually hurt?”

“Cut the crap, Hawkeye.” Clint really didn’t mean to push Steve into full-on ‘one of my things is broken’ territory, but apparently that’s where this is going. Also, Steve may be talking to Clint, but he’s looking at Bucky.

Clint really shouldn’t be surprised by what happens next.

“Clint broke a rib,” Bucky blurts.

“Traitor,” Clint hisses, ignoring the glare this earns him.

“I strapped it, but it’s not like there’s anything they could do anyway, and if he didn’t want to go, I wasn’t gonna make him,” Bucky continues.

“So what were you planning on doing if we were called out?” Steve demands. “Withholding information important to the team? Letting him put himself in danger?”

“It’s a broken rib, I didn’t lose a leg,” Clint cuts in. “I can still work.” Yeah, drawing a bow is a bastard with rib pain, but that’s not going to stop him if he’s needed. “And if I couldn’t, I would have told you.”

“And if he had internal bleeding? Punctured an organ? What then?”

Bucky scowls. “He didn’t.”

“You a doctor now, Buck?”

“Maybe Hydra enrolled me in a medical degree.” Wow. Bucky looks  _ pissed _ . “Keep your nose outta my business,  _ Captain _ .”

“Both of you are my business,” Steve says, with finality, like he’s already won the argument. Suddenly it makes way more sense why so many people used to punch him. “Hawkeye-”

“Bucky didn’t want to go,” Clint interrupts, intentionally vague but also truthful. “I just stayed with him. Then I forgot. But he really did tape me up! But I wasn’t going to leave-”

“Clint!”

Clint winces a little bit at the tone, doesn’t look at Bucky. “You know he isn’t going to let it go.  _ Sorry _ .”

The truth is that there are some missions that are more triggering than others, and that while Bucky is no more at risk of this than the rest of them, he’s more prone to hiding it when he is. Clint could speculate all day why that is, but he figures as long as he’s the one Bucky keep close even when he hides from everyone else, it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway, missions that involve laboratories and human experimentation aren’t a fun time for Bucky. 

Steve does that turn-on-a-dime which always blows Clint’s mind, straight from overprotective boss to...protectively concerned boss? Friend? He isn’t sure.

“Screw you, pal,” Bucky tells Clint -  _ fuck _ \- before he snarls at Steve, “He’s right. I didn’t want to go be peered at by doctors like I’m some kinda fancy science experiment this time. What you going to do about it, Stevie? Drag me down there?”

Steve looks abruptly calm. “No.”

Bucky, however, is not assuaged by this. “I’m fine!”

“Yeah, you sound just fine,” Steve comments. “Get back inside.”

Bucky turns on his heel and storms back into his suite, slamming the door behind himself. 

“Are you sending him to his room?” Clint asks, bemused, but Steve is already dragging him along behind him and through the closed-but-unlocked door. He does let Clint go again once they’re inside.

“Anything else I should know about?” he asks Clint. “With either of you?”

In response, Bucky pulls his shirt over his head and then throws it in Steve’s face. “Check yourself if you gotta know, asshole!”

Steve catches the shirt before it can hit the floor, and the two of them stare at each other for a long moment, Steve slightly taken aback and Bucky pure challenge.

“This seemed sexier in my head,” Clint blurts, apropos nothing. It does stop the stand off. Both Steve and Clint turn to him, expressions quizzical. He feels his ears go pink. “Uh, I mean-”

“You can get a strip show anytime you want, sweetheart,” Bucky replies, amused despite himself. “Just wait until this idiot leaves.”

“That hurts my feelings,” Steve replies dryly, and tosses Bucky’s shirt back to him. “I trust you. I’d prefer you went to medical, and I’d definitely prefer you told me -  _ both _ of you - if you’re hurting. But if you tell me you’re okay, or that you will be, I’m going to believe you.”

Bucky stares at him hard for a long moment, and then blinks, exhaling. “I’m fine. Now.” He shrugs his shirt back on in quick neat motions, tugging it down with a slightly embarrassed air. 

Steve nods, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Thanks, Buck.”

“I broke a rib,” Clint adds helpfully. 

“Thanks Clint,” Steve says. “You’re benched until you heal up.”

“Cap! That’s not fair!”

“Sorry, Hawkeye. Does it help if I promise to un-bench you if the world is ending?”

“No,” Clint mutters, even though it kind of does. Steve probably knows.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” he says, his mission here done. He’s probably got someone else to gently harass and manipulate into doing his bidding. “Go easy on him, Buck.”

Clint squawks, “No sex jokes!” but Steve is already out the door, and Bucky is laughing. 


	7. kidnapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little prequel to chapter 4 ("no, stop!")

It’s not an end-of-the-world mission. In fact, it’s so easy that it barely feels like a mission at all. They’re scouting out a building that may or may not contain intelligence pertaining to a group that may or may not be a shell for Hydra, quick and silent as shadows.

Bucky is on the far side of the building when he hears Clint mutter, “Shit!” in his ear. That’s not unusual, but the force in his tone is.

“I’ve got company,” he says, and then nothing, nothing, nothing.

Bucky doesn’t think. He just moves. His relationship with his own body is a little twisted - no surprises there - but it serves him well under pressure, even when his mind might not. For example: he charges straight to where Clint should have been, absolutely no care for whether or not it’s a trap.

It is. It’s a trap, and Clint is the bait, and Bucky puts his dumbass foot straight into it because, honestly, what else was he ever going to do.

There are too many people, and too many weapons. He assesses them mechanically, and then turns his focus to the masked man standing over Clint with a gun to his head.

“What do you want?” he demands. It’s a learnable skill, but he’s not patient by nature.

“You,” the man replies immediately. “Come quietly and I won’t hurt your friend here.”

Clint, disarmed and bleeding from the nose and eyebrow, looks angry but resigned. That’s good, that he’s not going to do anything stupid like try to convince Bucky to leave, or to put him in danger, because Bucky doesn’t like disappointing.

He’s not keen on getting him killed, either. Maybe saving now is just putting it off for later, but for him - for  _ them _ \- more time is often the key to surviving.

“Fine,” Bucky grinds out, and drops his gun onto the asphalt. People twitch at the clatter.

“On your knees. Hands on your head,” the man commands. He sounds a combination of nervous and excited that Bucky has heard plenty of times before. He’s a weapon, after all, one that people like to be in control of.

He does it anyway. He lets them search him, take his weapons, and then shackle his wrists behind his back. There’s a chance he might be able to break them if he tried, but he doesn’t because the ringleader still has the muzzle of his gun against Clint’s scalp.

They’re loaded into the back of a van, Clint first. They’re kept out of arm’s reach of each other, seated on opposite sides of the van. Clint gets shackled to a ring on the floor, but they leave Bucky. Either they think he won’t move, or they think if he does he would take the entire floor of the vehicle with him. 

Both are true.

“Bucky,” Clint snarls, heedless that there are half a dozen armed people in here with them, and that’s just the start, because he’s  _ furious _ . “What the  _ fuck- _ ”

“I like your head without a bullet in it,” he replies. 

“Shut up,” someone commands. Not the ringleader - too nervous - but it’s hard to tell behind the masks.

“Fuck you,” Clint returns. For all he outwardly seems to have no temper to speak of, there’s a lot of internalised rage inside him.

“Shut  _ up _ .” This time it’s punctuated with a pistol-whipping. Clint slams back into the wall of the van with a clatter, his cheek stained pink from the impact.

Bucky tenses, shoulders bunching. The shackles audibly groan. He snarls, “You hit him again, I’ll break you in two.”

“If you threaten me, I’ll shoot him,” comes the response, though it’s a touch less aggressive. The choice of words is careful. ‘Shoot’, not ‘kill’, because he knows that if he killed Clint they wouldn’t have anything over Bucky. Because he knows the threat of injury, of torture, is a more terrible threat to them than death would ever be.

Bucky, after a long moment, eases back in his seat. He stares, though, and makes sure it says,  _ later. _

“You fucking idiot,” Clint hisses under his breath.

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him, and hopes like hell that he’s going to be able to get the two of them out of this.


	8. fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playing fast n loose with biology here but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

There’s considerable interest amongst the scientific community about the serum, to the point where Tony, presumably concerned with copyright infringement, finally put his foot down and made Steve stop giving his DNA to everyone in a white coat.

Well, that was maybe the reason he put his foot down, maybe not. Either way, Bucky is grateful, because despite him being the recipient of a knock-off Hydra-developed version of the serum only, they’re considerably interested in him, too.

He and Steve are different - the longer he’s awake, the more obvious that becomes. The enhanced senses and strength, sure, that’s much of a muchness. But Bucky isn’t the perfect adaptable machine that Steve is, physically or mentally, and he doesn’t have the same healing factor either.

Also, Steve doesn’t get sick.

“Let me in,” Clint demands, for about the fifth time. Bucky doesn’t even bother replying.

Is it a dick move to lock Clint out of his own room? Probably. But it’s also Bucky’s room, and if Clint comes in here then Bucky can’t promise what’ll happen.

“What am I doing,” Clint mutters to himself. “Friday, what’s his stats?”

“Mister Barnes is currently experiencing a range of symptoms, including a cough, a fever, and irritated eyes,” Friday replies. Traitor.

“He’s crying?”

“Don’t you answer that,” Bucky warns Friday, shoving his head under his pillow.

“What’s your temperature, Buck?” Clint hollers through the door. “There’s a thermometer in the bathroom.”

Bucky knows this, because he went searching earlier. He hasn’t been sick like this since the 40s, or at least not that he remembers. He thought that he might be  _ dying _ .

Anyway, it was 104, which according to the Internet means he might actually be dying, or would if he didn’t run a couple degrees hotter than most people normally. 

“Fuck’s sake,” Clint mutters again, and then shouts, “Let me in or I’m going to get Steve to kick the door down!”

“Do it yourself!” Bucky yells back. His voice sounds wretched from the coughing.

“I fucking will!” There’s a thud, full of intent but without obvious results, and Bucky answers it by thumping his fist against the mattress. “Or...I’ll just get an override from Tony.”

Bucky’s eyes are closed, but he still rolls them. “Let him in, Friday.”

The door opens without warning and Clint, who was evidently leaning on it, trips into the room with a curse. It sounds like he catches himself before he eats carpet, at least.

“...Buck?” he asks from next to the bed, and then there’s fingers tracing over Bucky’s hair. “Bucky, hey.”

Bucky mutters, “No,” into the mattress.

“That kind of hurts my feelings,” Clint says, this time from mattress-level. His voice is gentle. “Hey. Look at me?”

Bucky sighs. Then he rolls over, pushing the duvet back to expose his face and looking into Clint’s concerned eyes.

“Holy shit,” Clint says, which is fair, because Bucky is literally covered in a rash from the hairline down. “Do you have  _ meningitis _ ?”

“I don’t know?” Bucky replies, which is how he ends up in medical.

 

* * *

“You have measles,” Bruce says, hands shoved in his pockets. “It can be quite dangerous, though your healing factor should protect you from any major complications. It’s also extremely contagious.”

“Aren’t most people vaccinated?” Clint asks.

“The vaccine was developed in the late sixties. He missed out by a few decades, unfortunately,” Bruce replies. He turns back to Bucky. “We’ll have to quarantine you for now, but it shouldn’t be an issue. Everyone you regularly come into contact with will have been vaccinated. Also, once you’re better, we’ll get you vaccinated. Otherwise you’ll contract mumps next.”

Clint is still frowning. “What if he gets meningitis? Or hepatitis? Maybe you should just vaccinate him for everything.”

“Do it,” Bucky croaks.


	9. stranded

“Oh, no,” Clint says. “Oh no no no  _ no _ . Please, baby, no.”

Ignoring this, his car sputters again, whines, and then, with a whimper rather than a bang, dies. 

That leaves him wrestling a suddenly deadened steering wheel to get himself onto the shoulder, horns blaring as people veer around him. Heart pounding, he manages to ease himself off the road and brake to a complete stop, though if a wide load drives past he’s going to lose a wing mirror. 

“Fuck.” He punches the steering wheel. The horn squawks pathetically. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

This is it. This is the end. He’s going to have to walk into traffic because this is really, truly, the last straw. He laughs, more out of disbelief than anything else, but it comes out strangled and awful.

Then, because his life can’t get any worse, his phone starts to ring.

He stares at it jittering in the cup holder, Bucky’s name flashing on the screen, and watches until it goes to voicemail. It starts to ring again almost immediately.

He blows out a breath, ignores how it hitches, then answers, “Hey.”

“You’re late,” Bucky replies.

Clint lost his watch at some point so he has no idea what the time is, but he also didn’t realise he had a curfew. “Yeah, okay.”

This non-smart-ass reply seems to give Bucky momentary pause. “Where are you?”

“About five miles away from the turnoff for the compound. On the side of the road.”

The thing is, Clint wasn’t exactly nice to Bucky when Bucky offered to come on this little blast-from-the-past road trip. Actually, he’d been a complete asshole fuck-up, to the point where he’s a little surprised that Bucky has broken his silent streak to call. That’s why it seems out-of-this-world crazy that Bucky sounds genuinely concerned when he asks, “Are you okay?”

And  _ that’s  _ what does it. Clint opens his mouth to say  _ yes of course I am I’ve never been better _ , but instead the sound that comes out is sob. He closes his mouth abruptly, and then his eyes, holding his breath.

He’s been walking a tightrope the last few days even as he walked his old haunts, visited gravestones of people he shouldn’t care about anymore and been recognised by people he’d grown up with who knew his face but not his past. 

Also, he’d gotten punched pulling a Steve Rogers in a bar when some assholes were harassing the waitress. The black eye is really the least of it, though.

“I’ve gotta call for a tow,” Clint croaks out, and fumbles to hang the phone up so bad he drops it into the footwell. Then he allows himself to drop his forehead onto the steering wheel and pretend he isn’t getting tears all over it.

All that therapy he did after Loki was bullshit, because his shrink had been big into emotional expression and it’s ‘cleansing’ benefits. Crying just leaves Clint feeling even more tired, a little embarrassed, and kind of dehydrated. He scrubs at his face with a forearm, sniffing.

The passenger door swings open, and Clint nearly throws himself into traffic unintentionally in fright before Bucky says, “Tow truck’s on its way.”

“Fuck!” Clint says, clutching his chest. Bucky drops into the passenger seat, then reaches across to Clint’s feet and fumbles around for a moment. When he straightens, he has Clint’s phone in hand, the screen lit with Bucky’s name and a count of thirteen minutes and twenty seven seconds. 

Neat.

“Kinda answered my question,” Bucky says calmly, hanging up on himself before dropping the phone back in the cupholder. He’s wearing jeans and a leather jacket, and when Clint looks in the rear view he can see a motorcycle parked up behind the car that he’d been too mired in self-pity to hear approaching.

Clint’s half-waiting for the ‘told you so’, the ‘I was right’. Bucky does none of that, sitting in companionable silence like Clint wasn’t a dick to him less than a week ago and never apologised for it. Like he hasn’t driven out to sit here and wait for a tow with Clint.

“Sorry,” Clint chokes out into the quiet.

“It’s okay,” Bucky replies, and when Clint reaches out to him Bucky takes his hand.


	10. bruises

It’s part of the job. That’s what Bucky tells himself - that it’s part of the job they both love, and that they wouldn’t be who they are without it, and that it’s more than just reclamation, more than atonement.

“Here,” he says, and ignores the hand Clint holds out in favour of pressing the ice pack directly to Clint’s forehead.

It’s mostly just red right now, but there’s already a little colour filling the hollow of Clint’s eye and down his temple, his eyelid swollen enough he looks like he’s half-squinting. He hisses a little at the cold but weathers it without flinching.

“Thanks,” Clint says, patting Bucky’s hip clumsily. He’s ditched his hearing aids, which is a surefire sign his head is aching.

Bucky keeps enough distance between them to make lip-reading possible as he says, “You’re going to be black and blue tomorrow.”

“What’s new?” Clint quips, trying to insinuate his fingers under Bucky’s to take control of the ice pack. It’s Bucky’s metal hand, so it doesn’t work well. “You would be too, if it weren’t for the serum.”

Well, that’s true. Instead, Bucky’s chest and flesh shoulder are currently a vibrant purple, but tomorrow they’ll already be faded almost entirely. He stays quiet, because the only words he has are _I wish it was different_ , and they’d be a waste of his breath. For now - and probably for always, given Clint’s propensity for involving himself in the troubles of every person on the face of the planet - this is his reality. Both of theirs.

The only upside is that at least they get to be in it together.

“Give it,” Clint grumps, determinedly pulling at Bucky’s thumb.

“My hand doesn’t get cold,” Bucky points out, because Clint always bitches about ice packs giving him chilblains.

“You don’t need to nursemaid me.”

“I’m going to make Stark make you a helmet,” Bucky replies. Clint responds by pushing his head, ice pack and all, into Bucky’s stomach. It’s cold, but kind of nice anyway.

“I’m going to retire,” Clint says, as he says every time, which is either an empty threat or an empty promise depending on how Bucky is doing on that particular day.

“Sure thing, pal,” Bucky says. Clint can’t hear it, but it’s also the same thing Bucky says every time, so it probably doesn’t matter.

One day, Clint might say it and mean it. Bucky hopes so, because the alternative is that he doesn’t live long enough to make that decision once and for all, and that’s something he doesn’t really let himself think about.

That’s part of the job, too.


	11. hypothermia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late D: but this one is long-ish?
> 
> Also, there's pre-stony in this if that isn't your jam fyi. And one of my favourite tropes, sharing body heat

_ The three musketeers _ , Clint thinks, and even his internal voice sounds blisteringly sarcastic.

He, Bucky and Tony are on the upper side of a supposed Hydra base hidden in the mountains, Bucky and Clint trudging through the snow while Tony flies overhead and scans the ground under them, purely because of Steve Rogers. The fact that only one of them is in love with him is the amazing part.

Clint is nearly ready to throw himself over a convenient cliff to get away from the sniping. The other two don’t hate each other anymore, but the pseudo-hatred-infused dick-measuring competition they’ve got going on is potentially worse. The only upside to it is that Clint knows they’re capable enough that it’s not distracting them from the task at hand.

He tunes them out, focusing instead on the terrain. They’re on what is essentially a glacier, looking for a potential secondary entrance concealed up here. The terrain is more suited to crampons than snowshoes, the snow frozen solid all the way through to the ice under it.

“We’re coming up on a body of water,” Tony interrupts himself to say. “One hundred yards out. Lemme scan it.”

They pause, waiting for the all clear. After a moment, Tony says, “It looks like there’s a good two feet of ice on top, but it’s deep. And there’s an inconsistency towards the middle of it.”

“Could that be the mystery second entrance?” Clint asks. 

“That, or a hole the water is coming through from under the glacier. I’m not exactly a geologist.”

“Nazis always did like their submarines,” Bucky muses, looking across the ice, “And Hydra likes their hidden escape routes.”

“Can we walk across it?” Clint says. 

“I wouldn’t want to land the suit on it in a hurry, but you two bantamweights will be fine,” Tony says, like he isn’t smaller than both of them. “Walk don’t run, and I promise I’ll catch you if you start imitating beginner ice skaters. Or those cold-water divers.”

“Generous, Stark,” Bucky says. “Scan the abnormality again and see if you can get a better idea of what it is.”

“We’ll look for the ‘Hydra was here’ graffiti,” Clint adds, tramping off in the direction of the water. 

There’s no discernable difference between solid ground and ice on foot, all of it covered in snow - he only knows he’s on ice when Tony tells him so. Even though it feels comfortably sturdy, the part where Tony said ‘it’s deep’ repeats softly in the back of his head the whole time.

“Whatever this is, it hasn’t been disturbed in a while,” Clint notes. “Summer, maybe.”

“If it’s anything, it’ll be for emergencies,” Bucky replies. “They wouldn’t use it without good reason, not if it would compromise the location of the base from above.”

Clint looks up at the large, empty, mountain-ringed grey sky overhead and says, “They’re planning for satellite observation, I’m guessing.”

“People who develop secret bases are paranoid, more news at eleven,” Bucky quips. 

“I’ve got metal at the bottom of the abnormality. With the purity, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it’s more ‘door’ than ‘giant chunk of rock with metal in’,” Tony advises. 

“So we’re less looking for graffiti and more for traps,” Clint says. 

There’s something like a tremor underfoot, so sharp and brief Clint thinks it’s his imagination. Later, he’ll realise that the thing about that catches his attention is that it feels like the pressure wave of an explosion.

The irony will not escape him.

Ahead of him, Bucky stops, head tilting like he’s listening for something. He says, “Clint.”

“Yeah?” Hearing isn’t his strong suit, especially compared with Bucky’s super senses, but even as he answers he can make out what Bucky can - there’s a whining crackle whipping through the cold-still air, and it’s growing.

Bucky spins, and with one forceful movement pushes Clint so hard he goes skidding across the ground on his ass, bow falling from his hand. There’s an enormous crack like a gunshot, and when he pushes himself up to look, the ice and snow before him is just dark, dark water.

There’s a short-but-long moment where Clint fumbles for his jacket zipper, watching for bubbles,  _ anything _ , even as he plans to follow Bucky in. There’s nothing. It’s still.

“Don’t you dare, Barton,” Tony snaps, and before Clint can follow through on his instinct to throw himself in, Iron Man drops out of the sky and into the lake with a splash. The water that lands on Clint’s bare face is so cold it hurts.

Even under the water, the armour isn’t entirely silent. Clint has a moment to be desperately grateful Tony is here before he breaks the surface in a streak of dripping wet red and gold, soaring over Clint’s head with a limp form bundled in his arms. 

Clint, seeing the trajectory like he always does, runs.

“-make it quick,” Tony is saying as Clint skids to a halt alongside them back on hard ground. “Clint, stay back.”

That...Clint, whose heart had frozen in his chest the moment he looked up and saw the hole in the ice and Bucky gone under, feels the pain start deep in his chest. “ _ No- _ ”

Tony rolls Bucky onto his side and slaps his back briskly with a bare hand already vaguely blue hand. There’s a moment where Bucky’s body just flops with the motion, too still, and then -

\- he jerks and sputters, coughing out half a frozen lake onto the ice before taking a wheezing, terrible, perfect gasp in.

“Cold reflex response leads to inhalation of water,” Tony says, sounding a little winded himself. Clint finds himself abruptly on his knees, hands on Bucky’s face and side as he keeps breathing and then begins to shudder. 

“We need to,” Clint starts, and then stops. He feels and sounds flustered, which is far from the norm for him. Usually it takes at least the possibility of the world ending for that.

“The others will be there in two minutes with the ‘jet,” Tony replies. “Don’t start stripping him for body heat transfer just yet.”

“Fuck you,” Clint replies half-heartedly, which is precisely when a brutally cold hand seals itself around his wrist so hard his bones creak. “Fuck! Bucky!”

“Barnes!” Tony says, but even as he moves to break Bucky’s grip, Bucky seems to register their voices, maybe, enough so that his fingers loosen and his eyes flutter open. They look huge in his bone-white face as he looks between the two of them, back and forth, and then visibly relaxes.

“Easy,” Clint says, and simply folds his body over Bucky’s to press some warmth back into him. It feels like hugging a shivering block of ice even through his clothes. “You threw me like ten yards, you asshole.”

Bucky makes a sound which is either a laugh of a sob. Overhead there’s the whir of engines as the Quinjet touches down further up the slope, and then the sound of boots pounding over the frozen snow. 

After that, everything moves very quickly. Bucky is hustled onto the Quinjet and wrestled out of his soaked layers. Nat looks over her shoulder from the pilot’s seat to consider them - or probably Clint, given he’s their usual pilot - and without a word gets them lifted off and away.

Bruce is leaning over Bucky, frowning gently. “Clint, Steve, strip.”

“I didn’t realise we were having a gentlemen-prefer-blonds show,” Tony replies, having shed the armour. From the way his arms are curved around his chest despite the warmth inside the ‘jet, it’s probably more reflexive than actually assholish, but Steve still sniffs even as he pulls his shirt off.

“Be careful. You’re next up,” Bruce warns him.

Clint strips down to his thermal underlayer and climbs into the pile of emergency blankets. Bucky rolls onto his side, heat-seeking or maybe just looking for comfort, and folds himself into Clint.

Clint, even as he wraps himself around Bucky, hisses. “Jesus - should you still be this cold?” It seems unbelievable that he’s still able to move at all, considering. He barely feels _ human. _

“He has what’s essentially a chunk of metal embedded into his chest cavity. It’ll sap heat from his core faster than a normal person,” Bruce replies. “On the upside, the serum can repair any cell death.”

“So he won’t lose the other arm,” Tony says. They all ignore him. 

“‘S normal,” Bucky stutters through his chattering teeth. On the other side of him, there’s movement, and then Steve’s arm swings over the both of them as he presses his chest to Bucky’s back. Bucky sighs at the sudden influx of warmth, and then presses his face into Clint’s throat.

Clint hates that there’s a ‘normal’ for Bucky when it comes to freezing, but he won’t say as much. Instead, he focuses on rubbing his hand over Bucky’s flesh arm, letting the metal one sit against his body and absorb his warmth, slowly but surely. It makes him shiver for a while, but eventually his body settles, and Bucky’s stops jittering shortly after. The awful tension in his body eases, and he relaxes into them both.

Clint, by that point pleasantly warm, murmurs, “No more iceblock.” Bucky replies something into his collarbones, but Clint doesn’t understand it.

He must doze for a while, because he comes back to himself sweating lightly. It’s what he’s used to, honestly - Bucky sleeps like a clingy octopus, inserting himself into Clint’s bed-space while fast asleep and then having the nerve to complain that he gets overheated like Clint isn’t at risk of being smothered while having a heatstroke.

“What’s it like being the filling in a blond sandwich?” Tony is asking from behind him, though his voice is low. Someone has lowered the overhead lights in the cabin, and Clint wonders absently how far they are from home.

“Like you don’t know,” Bucky rasps in reply. “You’re just jealous.”

“That bird-brain is getting the hugs? Not likely.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. Clint doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that Bucky is rolling his. “That’s what I meant.”

Clint stretches against him, and then has to struggle his way free of both Bucky’s eight arms and the blankets, rolling into the fresh air with a sigh. Now the metal flooring of the ‘jet actually feels good on his skin.

“Looking good, Hawkeye,” Tony leers, and then jerks when Clint manages to kick him in the thigh without looking. “Ow!”

“Don’t be creepy just because we’re not in live-saving mode anymore,” Clint advises. “Besides, you’ll make Steve jealous.”

This is greeted by a suspicious silence, one that rings with Tony’s aborted denial that that would ever happen. Steve interrupts it by pushing himself up to sit and saying, “Yeah, careful, Tony.”

“Yeah, fine,” Tony mutters, and scuttles away like a scalded cat in Bruce’s direction. Steve watches him go with distinct amusement.

“How far out are we, Nat?” Clint asks, pushing himself up and groping for his undershirt. Bucky sits up too, though he keeps himself swatched in blankets. There’s no shame in him as he leans himself against Clint’s shoulder.

“We’ll touch down in an hour,” she calls back. “You boys playing nice back there?”

“Do we ever not?” Clint replies, and wraps an arm around Bucky-and-blankets to keep him close.


	12. electricity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO FOR ONE UPDATES

Bucky is kind of remarkable for his ability to fit in just about anywhere despite his extremely recognisable traits - and yes, Clint means his attractiveness, not the metal arm - but it seems Clint has found the one place he can’t disappear in.

Bucky Barnes, it turns out, is the anti-farm-boy.

“Don’t-” Clint starts, but he’s too late.

Bucky flinches. “Fuck!”

He jerks like he’s going to automatically strike back at the cause of the pain. Clint, suddenly seeing a vision of all his hard work getting ripped out of the ground, shouts, “No!”

The next thing he knows, he’s on his back in the dirt, Bucky’s hard and familiar weight covering him. Clint has a breathless moment of surprise - literally breathless, because Bucky just half-winded him - before his lungs refill, and he laughs.

“Oh my _god,_ Bucky,” he sniggers. “It’s an electric fence.”

Bucky, whose entire body has been strung through with tension, exhales and drops his head onto Clint’s chest. “What?”

“You got zapped by the fence!” It wouldn’t have been funny if Bucky had broken the fence, which Clint has spent days painstakingly digging post holes for before he could even begin to strain the wire, but as it is - holy shit, he can’t stop giggling.

“No wonder it keeps your stupid cows in,” Bucky mutters, pushing himself up and then offering Clint a hand. He gives up after a moment when Clint does nothing but clutch his stomach while gasping, instead stomping back to examine the fence again, this time without touching it.

“You’re an asshole,” he shoots back. “You couldn’t’a told me it was live?”

This does slow Clint’s roll a bit - the accent only comes out when Bucky is genuinely pissed. He sits up, wiping his eyes quickly. “Sorry. Assumed you knew.”

Bucky stares at him. “How the hell would I know that?”

Well, that’s fair - as far as Clint knows, the closest Bucky has come to livestock is buying meat and milk at the grocery store. “Oh yeah. You okay?”

“Fine, apart from the goddamn heart attack,” Bucky replies, without looking at him. “You yelled like you’d been shot.”

Hm. Again, fair, except, “More like if _you’d_ been shot.” Clint responds to his own bullet wounds with muttered swears and a lot of bleeding, usually.

This time Bucky does look at him, if only to properly communicate to Clint exactly how unimpressed he is with that response. Clint winces, face scrunching. “Sorry?”

“Goddamn right you should be,” Bucky replies. He puts his hands on his hips. “Nice fence. Can we go inside now?”

“Sure thing, cowboy,” Clint tells him, and then yelps when Bucky reaches out and pinches him over the ribs.


	13. "stay"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vaguely sexy themes ahoy! Like, really super vague. SO vague.
> 
> Thank you guys for loyally commenting, by the way! I love it and read them all and they give me power <3

Clint’s a goddamn idiot. 

He’s sure he’s not the only guy in the world to fuck up friends-with-benefits, if that’s what this even is. Teammates-with-benefits? Acquaintances who fuck on the side? Whatever it is, it seemed a whole hell of a lot simpler at the beginning before Clint knew that particular sound Bucky makes when he’s almost overwhelmed with how good something figures.

Also, that Bucky hates mornings, and drinks his coffee with two sugars and a dash of milk, and smiles when Lucky goofily demands pets and fussing, and would eat pasta for every meal if he could. It was way easier when Clint didn’t know any of that.

Now he does. He can’t forget it, and certainly can’t forget how it makes him feel, but he can cover it up and lie like a rug, because he’s a spy and he was trained by the best.

The best might slap him over the back of the head and tell him he’s being an idiot, but the best is generally out there pretending to be harmless before she tazes someone via the neck. Clint and his feelings are on their own.

Case in point - Clint is lying on his back on his mattress, arms loosely slumped above his head and the sweat not even dry yet, glad as hell that Bucky is turned away while he dresses to leave. He’s too raw and broken open to have Bucky look at him right now, thinks everything might be written across his face.

He watches Bucky drag his jeans back on then pull his shirt over his head, adjusting it to cover everything back up. The mattress dips as he sits to pull his boots back on - he insists on wearing them most of the time when he’s inside like something could happen at any moment, to the point where Clint had been a little surprised he didn’t get into Clint’s bed with them on that first time.

It’s armour. Clint can understand that. It does, however, exacerbate the tenderness he feels in the base of his ribcage when Bucky pulls it all back on like it’s nothing to let Clint in that far and no further.

The thing is, Clint knows this isn’t on Bucky. They made an arrangement, and Clint is the one who opened himself up to this, who flayed himself open like that would help anything at all, and now when he’s hurting he wants to hate Bucky but can’t.

He shouldn’t be surprised. This is pretty much how it turns out whenever he sleeps with someone - he falls too deep too fast, then fucks it up for the both of them. Turns out that attempting to keep fucking and feelings separate hasn’t changed that at all.

“Enjoying the show?” Bucky interrupts his thoughts to ask, voice rough but amused.

“I prefer it when you’re taking your clothes off,” Clint replies, slumping a forearm over his eyes.

“So you’ve said.” Bucky pushes himself off the bed, but leans over to press his mouth to Clint’s, nose pressing the delicate inner skin of his arm, kiss brief and affectionate. “Thanks.”

“I aim to please,” Clint replies, and is impressed that it comes out level, if a little weary.

Bucky seems to notice this. There’s a tracery of concern in his voice when he says, “Get some sleep.”

“I will,” Clint says, uncovering his face and sitting up with a quiet sigh. His body hurts in the good way, muscles loose and well-used. “Once I’ve showered.”

“Only yourself to blame for that one, Hawkeye.” The banter, in Bucky’s easy voice, so different from the granite-hard tone he’d worn before, is another thing Clint has found out.

“You did help,” he replies. Bucky chuffs a laugh, turning away for the door. That’s the same, too - he saunters out every night like there’s not a single thing keeping him here once he’s got what he wants.

Clint’s the one who isn’t the same. It hurts worse each time, and it’s harder and harder to not do or say something that might make it stop.

The trade off is that it might end up hurting a whole lot worse. That’s the choice Clint is living with - festering wound, or clean break.

_ Don’t. Don’t do it. _

Clint says, “Stay.”

The word drops down dead into the silence. Clint thinks,  _ fuck _ . Well, if Bucky even vaguely likes him, he’ll pretend he didn’t hear -

No such luck. Bucky, who was halfway out the door, pauses. He doesn’t look back. His voice is low enough Clint can barely make it out when he replies, “I can’t.”

Clint’s voice is carefully casual and probably fooling no one when he says, “Okay. Sleep well, then.”

There’s a hovering moment where Bucky doesn’t move and doesn’t speak, and Clint has to stop himself from adding  _ now get out. _ Before he can lose that battle, too, Bucky slips out the door and closes it very quietly behind himself.

Clint waits until he’s safely in the shower, the water pouring down on his head and running down his cheeks and half-drowning him, to let himself sink his forehead onto the tiled wall and whisper, “I can’t do this.”

One day, he might actually figure out how to say that to Bucky’s face.


	14. torture

Bucky is used to things being hard for him now. For all the complexity and the pain of being the Soldier, there was a simplicity that came from someone else holding the reins. There was no tomorrow, not even a today, just the mission and nothing after it besides the cold and the quiet.

Breaking free of that was hard, and living is harder still. 

He’d barely mastered getting out of bed each morning when he met Clint Barton, who wears clumsy incompetence as a not-quite-fake disguise over top of skill. The thing about Clint that wasn’t the same as the others - even Steve - is that he has never hidden his own struggles under anything other than embarrassed courage.

It was a comfort when Bucky couldn’t have hidden his own fight even if he’d wanted to, because he could see that that was okay. And it’s still a comfort now, because even when Clint doesn’t say how he feels outright, it’s right there in his body and written across his face for Bucky to try to decipher.

Now, Bucky can get out of his own bed fine. It’s getting out of Clint’s that he finds hard.

He’s not looking right now, but he knows if he does Clint will look sated and easy, comfortable in his skin, and perhaps a little yearning. Affectionate, thoughtful, wanting, warm. The things that make less sense than pain.

Bucky, who is half apathy and half something deep and dark and tearing and possessive,  _ sick _ , can’t figure out how to do this right. Sometimes he doesn’t think he’s capable of anything beyond brief pleasure, barely better than the satisfaction of winning a fight. Sometimes he looks at Clint and sees something on him that he thinks echoes inside himself, and it scares the shit out of him.

It’s not fair. Bucky’s here because he’s hoping to find some sort of middle ground, or even just a port in the storm. He doesn’t know Clint’s reasoning, not really, but he does know that Clint deserves better.

So he keeps his face turned away, and talks easy and unaffected, and kisses Clint when Clint’s eyes are covered because that’s safer for them both. And then, he leaves.

Except Clint’s voice stops him before he makes it out the door, soft. “Stay.”

Bucky, inexorably and unavoidably, stops. 

The thing is, he wants. He wants to stay. He thinks about how it would feel, falling asleep in Clint’s bed, where it’s warm and soft and smells of them together, where Clint is within arm’s reach. He thinks about how Clint wants that, clear as day in his voice. He thinks about the nightmares that mean he wakes up striking out at nothing, and of the imprints those blows could leave on Clint’s skin. 

He thinks about what getting that close would mean. He thinks about all the ways he could fuck it up. It scares the shit out of him.

“I can’t,” he says, because it’s the truth. The whole truth is  _ I can’t do this _ , but he can’t say that to Clint because he doesn’t even know if it really is true.

Clint, straight away and smoothly unbothered - a lie that Bucky hates - says, “Okay. Sleep well, then.”

Bucky slips out, closing the door behind him. The words are building on his tongue and he can’t let them out, can’t can’t can’t - 

_ I can’t do this _ .

Bucky has been tortured, but this feeling, whatever the hell it is, is a new and unique kind of pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, hitting play on a Halsey track: BAD AT LO-OVE
> 
> You can come yell at me on [tumblr](http://badacts.tumblr.com/) if you like :)


	15. manhandling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LEAST inspiring prompt I'm sorry :')

Clint wakes up slow and dizzy, a little something like he’s hungover and still drunk at the same time. A head injury, he thinks, because  _ holy shit _ he hurts.

“ не двигайтесь,” someone says, and for a moment Clint is slightly concerned that something has finally been permanently knocked loose before he recognises it as Russian.

And, oh. Now he remembers - Bucky disappearing and then reappearing with frozen-cold eyes, not recognising Clint, which would have been bad enough at any time but was worse when they were mid-mission. That’s the last thing he remembers.

“Buck?” he slurs. Fingers - warm, human - press to his lips, a gentle request for silence. It’s kind of nice, seeing as last he remembers, Bucky was trying to kill him.

He prys his eyes open, blinking against the way the ceiling spins. He’s inside. He doesn’t remember being inside? Also, Bucky is crouched over him but isn’t looking at him, hair falling across his face, the shape of him not quite familiar. Feral - Clint thinks that’s the word he’d use to describe him if asked.

Clint flexes his fingers, finds them working alright, and raises them. Bucky flinches a touch but doesn’t strike out, only sparing Clint a glance before looking away again.

Clint signs, slowly,  _ is someone coming _ ?

Bucky watches this, forehead furrowed, no recognition on his face. Figures, really - the Winter Soldier probably never learned ASL.

It doesn’t matter much anyway, because Bucky’s attention flickers away again, his body bunching up for a split-second before he explodes into movement.

Clint wasn’t prepared to move, never mind be abruptly pulled to his feet. He reels, blood rushing every which way. His headache turns from painful to blinding, literally - his vision goes grey.

When he regains some of his senses, he’s in a fireman’s carry across broad shoulders, metal digging into the base of his sternum. He doesn’t fight it - he figures if Bucky was going to kill him, he would have done so already and finished the job before. This feels a little more like a rescue, and Bucky feels distant, but not gone like he did before.

He does the only thing he can do in this situation, and tries not to puke.


	16. bedridden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catching up :D

 

“Are you sulking?” Clint asks, prodding him with a toe.

“Fuck off,” Bucky replies, in a tone that he will deny till his dying breath is sullen as hell. 

“Okay,” Clint says. He’s been doing something on his phone that requires all of his concentration for a while - Bucky suspects a game of some kind. He’s certainly made himself comfortable, stealing a pillow from somewhere to cushion the uncomfortable looking chair and propping his feet up on the bed by Bucky’s hip.

He’s been here this whole time. Bucky would have kicked him out if he wasn’t currently incapable of moving or, of course, terribly afraid of being left in this hospital room alone.

He’s technically never had an injury like this, one that’s had him laid up for days. However, the combination of compound femur fracture and bullet wounds to the chest mean he’s stuck here, full of pins and screws, his body trying to catch up on itself while various well-meaning and curious doctors feed him high-calorie meals every hour.

So, he’s going fucking insane. That it’s manifesting just as irritability is, in his opinion, pretty impressive.

“We could play cards again,” Clint suggests after a while, not looking up from his phone.

“You could leave me alone,” Bucky replies. Okay, maybe that came out as a little more than just irritable. Whatever.

“Nah,” Clint says. “Don’t think so.”

Bucky huffs out a sigh. There’s a knock at the door, signalling the entrance of a nurse with yet another glass of pale-coloured sludge that they want Bucky to drink. 

“Hi, James.” Her name is Alice, which Bucky only knows because Clint does. He seems to delight in knowing all of the names of the regular staff here. Bucky thought at first it was because Clint has spent so much time here with his own injuries, but now he suspects Clint has learned them specifically while he’s been here with Bucky.

“I don’t want that,” Bucky rasps, and then, “Hi,” because he’s not a complete asshole.

She seems unbothered, setting it on the table within reach. “Drink it when you’re ready. Don’t let Hawkeye have it, and remember that if you don’t drink it you’ll have two to drink at 2.”

She bustles out, presumably to gently and insistently boss other people around. Bucky knows she’s serious about making him drink two because she’d done it yesterday.

“C’mon, Buck,” Clint cajolls. “Growing boys need their vitamins.”

“I’m not growing.”

“You’re regrowing your sternum. That counts.” Clint puts down his phone. “C’mon, babe. The faster you go along with what they want, the earlier I can get you home.”

Well, when he puts it that way.


	17. drugged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEHIND AGAIN
> 
> TW for drugging/drugged drinks/discussion of people trafficking.

Clint hasn’t run a job in a nightclub for years - not since he was new in the spying-for-the-morally-righteous game, back when he trusted SHIELD about as much as they trusted him.

It seemed kind of exciting in a nostalgic way, right up until he walked through the doors and remembered that he’s  _old_ now.

So, he’s leaning against a table in a dark corner, watching Katie where she’s taken over the dance floor and indoctrinated a bunch of girls her own age as her followers. At least one of them is having fun - Clint sure as hell isn’t, and by the silence in Clint’s earpiece, Bucky isn’t enjoying it much either.

Word is that the club is owned by a group who do a roaring trade in people trafficking with some major arms dealing on the side, so Kate is the bait and Clint is the muscle that is pretending to have never met her and Bucky is supervising from a distance. It’s a nebulous plan, but it’s worked before.

He’s been leaning steadily harder on the table and wondering if the music is making him even more deaf for about an hour when a waitress in short-shorts and a tank top appears at his elbow. She has a tray balanced on hand with one drink on it that she quickly offloads in front of him.

“From the girl at the bar!” she yells into his ear, pointing vaguely at said bar. Clint turns to look and sees around a dozen girls - literal girls, some of them - of whom precisely none are looking back. By the time he turns back to tell the waitress that she’s probably got the wrong person, she’s already gone.

Clint shrugs. “Cheers.” He takes a big swallow, grimacing at the taste. Shitty rum and coke, delicious.

“What?” Bucky asks. They left him in a hotel room across the street from the underground nightclub with camera access to everything they could hack into, but half of Clint expects that he’s probably lying on his belly on the roof watching instead.

“Someone thinks I’m hot,” Clint says, more at a normal level than a straight-up yell.

The mic obviously picks it up, because Bucky snorts. “Tell them you’re broke.”

“Are you implying someone bought me a drink because they assume I’m rich because I’m the oldest person in this building?”

“Exactly that.”

“Flirt on your own time!” Kate’s breathless voice cuts in. She sounds like she’s having the time of her life.

Clint takes another drink, grimaces again. He’s never been a big drinker, sticking to beer when he bothers at all, so the rum is at least already giving him a touch of that warm, loose feeling. “At least they don’t water down their booze.”

“Of course they do,” Bucky says. “That’s an eleven buck drink that’s half water and you know it.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Clint replies absently, and then considers the glass for a moment. “Huh.”

It’s been a while since he’s drunk anything, but he didn’t always abstain, and he knows how he should feel after a couple of mouthfuls. The warmth is spreading, combined with a faint tingling in his extremities. He blinks a touch blurrily, looks to the bar - still no eyes on him - and dumps his drink on the floor. Kind of a dick move, but he doesn’t feel bad about it.

He needs to be _out_ , his heart picking up even as his brain slows. The door to the bathrooms are closer than the exit, so he makes his way straight there, fighting through the way the floor seems to dip and sway. He crashes through the door a little ungracefully, looking up at the signage - women one way, men the other - and heads for the men’s room. He’s aiming for a sink to stick his head under, but instead there’s a hand on his elbow and he’s hustled past and down the dim hall.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is definitely slurring.

“Clint?” Bucky says, like it’s maybe not the first time. Clint likes his voice, always has - warm and currently kind of angry, but Clint is a little bit into that.

“What’re you,” he says, as he’s led up some stairs and through another door. The cold air slaps him in the face, and he realises he isn’t wearing his jacket. It’s weird because he isn’t supposed to be -

His body is moving before his mind computes. He breaks the hold on his arm and slams his elbow backwards into someone’s belly, driving the air out of them. Then he spins and kicks them in the knee.

Both Kate and Bucky are yelling at him now. Clint starts to say, “I’m,” and then the breath is driven from him as he crashes into a wall, one arm twisted behind his back.

“Stay still, you little fuck.” The words are said right into his ear. His aim is really good, which he’ll credit with the fact that when he stomps he lands a crushing blow to the instep of the big guy holding him.

“Clint.” Oh! Clint knows that voice, is turning blindly towards it when someone - something? - strikes him hard across the face, dropping him to one knee. He tastes blood, which is better than the shitty rum here.

Bucky shares Clint’s taste for clever quips, so Clint is kind of surprised that he leaves it at Clint’s name before launching into what sounds like a whole lot of violence. Clint can’t really see it, because his eyes may or may not be working.

There’s a warm hand on his face that makes him flinch. He relaxes when Kate says, “Just me, stay still. Bucky!”

There’s no response. After a second, she repeats, this time with considerably less patience, “ _Bucky!_ Leave it!”

Clint snickers. It sounds weird, which is even funnier. “Sounds like…Lucky.”

“I love you, please be quiet,” Kate replies. “BUCKY!”

Actually, Clint kind of wants him too. Kate’s great, wonderful, really, but Bucky can hold Clint together just right, and right now Clint really needs that.

“Bucky,” he says, hearing his own voice at a distance followed by a sudden lull, and then nothing but dizzy darkness.

 

* * *

 

Clint was trained ages ago not to panic when waking up restrained, not because it’s a useful skill in the field - though it is - but because he once pulled out an IV while woozy and injured and trying to make a run for it, and since then he’s been labelled untrustworthy. That’s why he doesn’t do anything except rattle his handcuffed right wrist on the bed rail and then relax into it.

Warm fingers trace over his hand and forearm. “You’re fine.”

“I’m dying,” Clint corrects in a desert-dry rasp. His head is _killing_ him.

“You’re hungover.” Bucky concedes - or maybe corrects again, Clint doesn’t care. “And you nearly got sex-trafficked.”

“Did I?” he doesn’t remember that.

“Your drink was on the house. So was the ketamine in it.”

“Cool,” Clint says blurrily, and uses his non-handcuffed hand to pat Bucky’s. It’s promptly returned to his side, which is good, because the IV in it stings a bit. He’s probably not supposed to move it.

“Stay still,” Bucky tells him. He sounds more grouchy than he should, in Clint’s opinion.

“D’you get ‘em?” Clint asks. “Or did they leave?”

“We got them. Kate and I, that is. You lay in an alley in the recovery position.”

“That’s fine.” As long as there aren’t sex traffickers still running around, trafficking people.

...wait.

Clint’s eyes pop open. It hurts a lot. “I nearly got _trafficked_?”

Bucky is resting one elbow on the mattress by Clint’s hip, his free hand still pressed over Clint’s handcuffed one. “Even bets on whether they thought they could sell Hawkeye for profit, or whether they really were going to sell you to some asshole for sex.”

Wow. Clint closes his eyes again - _ouch_ \- and mutters, “Damaged goods.”

“I like you fine,” Bucky says. Nice. “Also, you broke someone’s ribs and someone else’s foot while out of your mind. They would have let you out the back of the van five minutes down the street.”

“More trouble than I’m worth.” It’s a point of pride, mostly.

Bucky sighs. “Probably.” Clint can hear the quirk of a smile in his voice, though, so it’s okay.


	18. hostage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't even whump but I read the prompt and thought of this scene and NEEDED to write it, so.

When they’re not working, they’re just like everyone else. 

Well, Steve likes to claim Bucky and Clint are more like depressed college students from a sitcom, but during their time off he wears khakis unironically, so what does he know.

Technically their meals are supplied - it’s in their contracts, something Clint likes to joke he was careful to check, though Bucky suspects it was more of a concern than he lets on - but that doesn’t stop them from going on a mid-afternoon jaunt into the city for burritos on a whim. If that’s wrong,  _ Steve _ , Bucky isn’t interested in being right.

They stop at a grocery store on the way back, one of the smaller suburban ones instead of the huge gleaming things that kind of freak Bucky out a little bit. Clint, hearing-aid-less and on a mission for a particular kind of shitty powdered donuts from the bakery system, is leading the way while Bucky trails behind him, browsing the potato chips. There’s so much variety - Clint likes the ones that make your fingers bright orange, but Bucky prefers the weirdly healthy-looking corn chips with real seeds in and sea salt on. They’re great with salsa.

It’s all very normal, besides the sudden loud voice from the front of the store demanding, “Empty the till!”

Bucky is always armed - ha - but his first thought is absolutely that Clint is deaf and in sweatpants, one of his shoelaces untying itself. His second thought is that he really hadn’t planned on getting shot today, but needs must.

The middle-aged woman in a pantsuit flinches and looks at Bucky. He makes eye contact and holds his finger to his lips. Collateral damage is worse that a gunshot wound, which is his third thought.

First things first - he takes two steps forwards and taps Clint on the shoulder, and then, when he turns, signs,  _ robbery. _

Clint blinks. He’s raising his hands to sign his reply when the same voice from before yells, “Hey! Whoever’s back there, come out, or I’ll shoot this dude in the head?”

“We’re coming!” Bucky replies. “There’s two of us. Don’t shoot.”

He gestures to the woman to crouch down, and is gratified when she actually does, like he looks trustworthy and like he knows what he’s doing. Fuck, she probably recognises them. This must be what Steve feels like all the time.

Bucky grasps Clint’s wrist, giving it a squeeze that he hopes says  _ follow my lead _ , and rounds the corner with his hands up.

The kid manning the register is standing with his hands on his head, and he definitely recognises them by the way his gaze flickers back and forth between them. Thankfully, he keeps his mouth shut.

“Hey,” Bucky says, “My pal here is deaf, so don’t get upset if he’s not chatty.”

“You think I want you to talk?” the guy with the gun asks.  _ He _ looks like an asshole. Too well-dressed to be desperate, too cocky to be worried about much - Bucky can read him like a book. Used to be, this was the kinda guy Steve couldn’t resist getting into fights with.

“What do you want?” Bucky asks, rather politely, in his opinion.

“For you to stand there and shut up,” is the reply. He turns to Register Kid, waving his gun under his nose. “Money. Now.”

“O-okay,” Register Kid says, and starts to shovel cash from the till into the bag. It doesn’t look like much in the grand scheme of things, and Gun-Wielding Asshole seems to agree. He grabs a handful of the gum on the counter, and then a handful of cheap plastic lighters, adding them to his bag.

Gun-Wielding Asshole keeps looking back at them twitchily, but he keeps the gun on Register Kid. That’s annoying - Bucky wants to squash the asshole like a bug, but he won’t risk the kid.

There’s a clatter from the back of the shop, and they all pause. Gun-Wielding Asshole looks at Bucky and says, “Did you lie to me? Is there someone else there?”

“Nah. They’re just bad at stacking their shelves here. Stuff falls over all the time,” Bucky replies.

“Shut the fuck up! Get out here, whoever you are back there!”

Bucky half-expects the woman back there to stay in place - actually, that’d be handy, because either he’ll have to take Bucky’s word for it or go looking, which will give Bucky a chance to take him out. Instead, of course, Pantsuit appears from around a cookie display, hands up and shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Get over with the others, bitch,” Gun-Wielding asshole says. Pantsuit walks sideways, and Bucky is absolutely not even a little surprised when Clint inserts himself between her and the gun.

This attracts Gun-Wielding Asshole’s attention. He looks Clint up and down - grey sweats, black hoodie unzipped over a Hawkeye-branded purple shit - and sneers.

“You like Hawkeye?” their would-be hostage-taker asks, looking amused as he gestures at Clint’s shirt with his gun. “What, ‘cause you’re deaf? You know he’s pretty useless, right?”

Not very smart.

“Representation is important,” Bucky says, and reaches out and grabs the muzzle of the gun with his left hand.

It’s the real deal, not a toy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t warp satisfyingly in his grip. No-Longer-Gun-Wielding Asshole’s eyes bulge as he watches.

“I wouldn’t try firing that,” Bucky suggests. “Unless you want to lose that hand.”


	19. exhaustion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is gonna leave me googling 'bad weather' when I get to the harsh climate prompt, but. Worth it.

Back when Bucky used to be the Winter Soldier, the boogeyman assassin who haunted the nightmares of the people in the intelligence community ranked high enough to know about him, they used to hypothesise that he was a robot. Not because of the lack of emotion, or the mask, though he assumes that played a role.

No, it was because he never seemed to get tired. That he was a hunter, inexorable, who always caught up with his targets in the end.

Turns out that’s half-truth - his endurance is far better than a regular human’s, so he can keep moving long after his prey was worn out. It’s only half-true because he does get tired, even if it takes a while.

Case in point - they’ve been fighting their way through wave after wave of enemies on the ground, creatures that crawled from some kind of rift that opened in the middle of the street in downtown NYC, a brutal throwback to the Chitauri that Bucky knows is wearing on the others. The rift is closed - thanks, scientists - but even though the numbers are thinning, they aren’t down yet.

Bucky _hurts_. Even his body can’t repair itself fast enough to keep up, his muscles burning with fatigue. Steve sent Nat off twenty minutes ago with a head wound that she wasn’t fast enough to avoid, and Sam got the same treatment fifteen minutes before that. The rest of them are still going, somehow, but Bucky’s kind of hoping it isn’t going to last much longer.

And, as if in answer to his prayers - and they are prayers, because if he was going to pray he would absolutely address them to his teammates - he hears Bruce say, “Hah!” and Hill say, “Avengers, retreat to the Captain’s position,” right before a jet screams overhead and releases a cloud of something on all of them.

The effect on the aliens is immediate - the one Bucky just smacked backwards _shrieks_ when it makes contact. There’s a sizzling, crackling noise, and it’s almost as though it’s skin is _drying_ \- and then it freezes in place, it’s human face frozen in a rictus of pain.

It’s disgusting. Bucky stays in place for a long, breathless moment, arm pulled back for another blow, waiting for the thing to move, and then Hill says, “Avengers, stand down. The enemy is neutralised.”

“Thank fuck,” Clint gasps.

Bucky feels a burst of amused affection, but it goes cold in his chest when Agent Torerro yelps, “Hawkeye!”

Bucky only knows Torerro’s name and voice because Clint likes her. She got a college scholarship for archery and nearly went to the Olympics before she became an intelligence agent instead. She was also the last one on Clint-watch, which is what they call the task of bringing up fresh quivers of arrows to Hawkeye in long battles like this.

“Status?” Steve asks, but Bucky’s already moving in the direction of the building Hawkeye is perched on. It doesn’t matter that stopping has brought every bruise and ache to a screeching crescendo, he’ll climb the outside of the skyscraper if he has to.

“He was - he was fine,” Torerro stutters, and Bucky forcibly reminds himself that she’s a young agent. “I don’t think he was hit, I think he just...fainted?”

Bucky is halfway down the street and gaining pace above ‘pathetic crawl’ when there’s a whine from behind him, and he’s grabbed by the back of his armoured vest, lifting him off the ground mid-stride.

“Don’t struggle,” Iron Man warns. “I can’t feel my arms at all.”

“Lucky you,” Bucky replies, shouting over the rush of air. “Don’t you fucking dare drop me!”

“Stay still then! I try to do you a favour and it’s bitch-bitch-bitch, everyone’s a goddamn critic.”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him, which is probably why Tony drops him while fifteen feet above the roof of Clint’s building. Bucky contemplates calling him a bitch, but he’s busy rolling the impact away - ouch - and then heading for Clint and Torerro.

Torerro looks grateful to see him, and he’s reminded abruptly that the support team has been on duty as long as they have. The power is out, and Bucky is willing to bet getting up the stairs to Clint was a mission in and of itself.

“He’s coming around, I think,” she says, her hand resting on Clint’s chest where she’s peeled his coat off. The shirt underneath is soaked through with sweat, and his hair is dark with it.

Bucky takes a knee on Clint’s other side, checking his pulse - racing and little weaker than Bucky would like - and his pupils, which makes him groan and try to slap at Bucky. ‘Try’ because his arm only twitches at his side. “Has he been drinking?”

“Like...alcohol?” Torrero asks, brow furrowed.

“Like water,” Bucky corrects, and somehow doesn’t roll his eyes.

“I think so?” she replies, gesturing vaguely at the ground by Clint’s discarded bow where there are a half-dozen empty water bottles, which is when Bucky clicks.

“Hey, Cap, Hill?” he says, getting two affirmatives. “Send up medics to Hawkeye’s location. He and Agent Torerro both have heatstroke.”

In retrospect, it’s not that surprising. The roof is practically radiating heat thanks to the dark cladding and the refraction off the windows of taller buildings. Clearly Clint chose the location for the view, and not at all for not getting cooked in the process.

In the end, Hill sends a helo up for them. By the time it lands Clint is making dissatisfied noises over his cramping muscles but seems a touch less confused. The medics get both of them strapped in and taped up with IV fluids, and then they take off in the direction of the Helicarrier.

“Did you get my bow?” Clint asks for the third time. He seems generally uncertain and as though he isn’t quite tracking, but every time he looks at Bucky that eases a little. Bucky is sitting on the floor next to Clint’s head, out of the way of the medics.

“Right here,” Bucky says, showing him.

One of the medics leans over then and says, “We’ve got icepacks to cool them both down. Alana isn’t in quite so bad shape, but I want to get their core temps dropping as soon as we can.”

“Damn,” Bucky says, because Clint hates icepacks and the cold in general, and everyone who works with the Avengers knows it. “Do what you gotta. I’ll keep him settled.”

“Cool,” the medic replies, completely unironically, and then shoves an icepack into each of Clint’s armpits and between his thighs.

Unsurprisingly, this makes Clint squirm, face pinching. Bucky takes his hand and holds it down against his side. “Easy, sugar. They’re helping you.”

“You’ll feel better in no time,” the medic tells Clint cheerily, patting his chest. “Just stay still and let your man keep you company.”

“My man,” Clint says, less confused and more satisfied. Bucky snorts.

“I’m going to give you so much shit for not tapping out later,” he informs Clint, who hums in agreement. Well, Bucky is going to take it as agreement. Not that a lack of agreement would stop him.

When they arrive in the helicarrier’s medbay, Nat is there waiting for them, arms crossed. Her forehead is stitched up and dressed, but there’s blood in her hairline. She greets Clint with a sharp, _“дурак_ ,” which makes Clint perk up like a scolded dog.

“Don’t be mean to me, I’m dying,” he replies, a sure sign that he’s feeling better.

“You being stupid means that I can be mean to you,” Nat corrects, taking the stool nearest to where Clint’s bed has been parked. Usual protocol is for Avengers to be taken to the individual rooms on the far side of the bay, but Steve insists that those rooms are saved for people with serious injuries. Also, the rest of the Avengers are here anyway.

Steve is sitting on the edge of Tony’s bed, letting someone in scrubs glue together a deep slash along his upper arm. Tony is lying on his stomach, his bare back bruised enough that even Bucky feels the tiniest touch of sympathy, but his head is turned to Steve and they seem to be arguing good-naturedly.

Bruce is sitting on the floor at Steve’s feet, legs stretched out in front of him and chin resting on his chest. The exhaustion is normal for him, at least. Sam has one arm in a sling and his own bed on the other side of Bruce, and Thor is waving off a nurse brandishing a suture kit with great enthusiasm. Bucky would put money on the nurse.

“Are you in one piece?” Nat asks him, interrupting his visual check.

“I’m fine,” Bucky replies, and is promptly poked in the ribs by Clint. “Don’t move.”

“Let her check you over,” Clint says. “Go on. The sight of your bare chest will heal me.”

“Fuck off,” Bucky suggests, but less than two minutes later is shucking off his shirt anyway. Sam wolf-whistles, and then grins unrepentantly when Bucky levels a glare at him.

The cuts are already healing - the worst of it is the deep bruising around his left shoulder where metal meets flesh. Like all prostheses, there’s only so much action his arm can take before it starts to damage his body. Nat clucks her tongue at it, fingers light and clever overed the heated skin, but lets him off the hook. She doesn’t even make him take his pants off after checking them for holes, which is nice of her.

“You can borrow my icepack,” Clint offers once he’s pulled his shirt back over his head. Even though it’s a technical fabric and he’s filthy anyway, it still makes him wince to put it back on. He can’t wait for a shower.

“You keep it,” Bucky replies. “How’re you feeling?”

“Terrible,” Clint says. His eyes are closed and his mouth is pinched like he’s nauseated, but he sounds _compos mentis_ again.

“You’re an asshole,” Bucky tells him. “You should have taken a break.”

“Probably,” Clint says. “The only reason I know my arms are still there is because they hurt like hell.”

“People can die of heat exhaustion.”

“Sniper. Not my first rodeo.”

“No, it isn’t. So it would nice if you’d figured out by now that you’re on a team.”

Nat gives Bucky a look that Bucky will choose to interpret as approving before standing and heading across the room.

When he looks back to Clint, his eyes are open. In more ways than one, too - Bucky can read everything from them, like the exhaustion has stripped him back. It stings in a funny way, because Bucky usually revels in seeing so much from Clint-the-closed-book, but he doesn’t like it like this.

“I can’t forget it,” Clint mutters. “Can’t leave you guys without eyes on your backs. Couldn’t forgive myself if something…”

“I get it,” Bucky says quietly. He does. “You trust me, right?”

Clint’s brow furrows. “Of course.”

“Then next time, remember you’re not the only sniper on the team,” Bucky says. “I got your back. And theirs.”

Clint looks up at him, and then smiles a little. “Even Sam’s?”

“Of course. No way I’m dealing with Steve’s shitfit if I got him killed.” Bucky says.

Clint laughs, eyes slipping closed again. “You talk a big game, baby.”

Bucky pokes him a little. “Just don’t forget.”

“I’ll try my best,” Clint replies, “Promise.”


	20. concussion

Bucky comes to all at once, and everything is pain.

His breath jolts in his chest with it as it spikes down his neck and into his spine. He considers opening his eyes but finds he can’t, anyway. His ears aren’t ringing as much as they are shrieking.

The last thing he remembers is putting his gear on and climbing aboard the quinjet, Steve at his shoulder and Nat in the pilot’s seat. Right now he can’t even tell if he’s moving or not. He’s probably not dead, at least, because he doubts it would hurt this much.

Eventually, after an eternity, the shrieking drops to a whine and then dies, and he can clearly hear Clint talking quietly. 

“What the hell is the alternative?” he’s hissing. “Be  _ patient _ ?  _ That’s _ your big idea? I can see why you’re in charge!”

There’s a pause. “I’m not - look, I’m terrified, okay? Give me a break, Jesus. He’s-”

Bucky tries to open his eyes again and this time is almost successful until the tiny movement sets off another round of pain fire-works. He inhales, coughs, and then nearly blacks out.

“Shut up, shut up,” he hears Clint says from a great and dizzy distance. “Bucky, try to stay still, okay? You’re alright. It’s okay.”

It’s not his ‘it’s okay’ voice he’s using though. He sounds taut and wired and a little bit desperate, but his touch when he rests his warm palm on Bucky’s forehead is gentle. 

Bucky says, “What…?” It comes out as a whisper, mostly because he dare not move his jaw out of fear at bringing the pain back.

“You hit your head,” Clint says, and his voice shakes on it. “We’re - the building started to come down before we could get all the way out. I think we’re in the basement right now.”

“You…?” Bucky asks, because Clint is conscious and talking but that doesn’t mean he isn’t hurt, and Bucky can’t  _ see _ him. “Clint-”

Clint makes a noise that is trying to be a laugh but it mostly a sob. “ _ God _ . I’m fine, I swear. Bruised. Of course you’d - Steve?”

He seems to listen for a moment, and then says, “Oh, thank God.”

Bucky realises he must have lost his earpiece at some point, and reaches for his ear, finding that he can move his arm as long as he’s careful not to jar his neck. His fingers find tacky blood on his earlobe and throat right before they’re caught by Clint’s.

“Stay still, Buck, okay? Please?” Clint says, his fingers stroking over Bucky’s knuckles. “Yeah, he’s awake. Semi-aware. Well, this is kind of stretching my knowledge on head injuries, to be honest. Yeah. Just keep me in the loop. Hey, can you open your eyes?”

Bucky assumes this last part is aimed at him. He says, “Maybe,” and then gives it a shot.

For a moment he thinks it doesn’t work, and then he thinks he might be blind. Then, Clint moves, and he realises it’s just dark as fuck. His mind, very slow, puts together that with ‘collapsed building’ and finally makes four. 

“Hey,” Clint says, leaning over him. He looks blue-tinted in whatever hell light source he’s found, and Bucky can see tear-tracks cutting through the dirt on his cheeks. “Hey, sweetheart. Ever told you how glad I am for the serum?”

“Once a day,” Bucky replies. “Twice Sundays.”

Clint laughs, a little stronger this time. “Or maybe it’s just your hard skull I should be thankful for.”

“Both,” Bucky decides, and lets his eyes slide closed again. “Hurts.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Clint says. “Can’t give you anything until I sure you’re not going to die on me.”

“Not gonna die,” Bucky assures him. 

“You better not, I’ll kill you,” Clint says. There’s a soft plastic sound, and then the cool prickle of an antiseptic wipe passing over his face, scrubbing around his nose and mouth, then getting at his ear. “Steve’s coming. Something about if he had to listen to me for another second, he’d start digging with his bare hands.”

Bucky has no doubt he said something to that effect, though he suspects it had a slightly different emphasis, and was motivated less by Clint being annoying and more by Clint’s obvious emotions. “He’s slow.”

“I’ll tell him you said that,” Clint says. “Hey, Cap. Bucky said you’re slow. Yeah, he’s improving, I think. Buck, Steve says if you’re well enough to complain, you’re well enough to start digging from our end, but I’m going to ix-nay that one right off the bat.”

“Soft,” Bucky notes, but smiles a little and knows that Clint will see it.


	21. harsh climate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK.
> 
> This doesn't make much sense with the prompt but...weather?? Whatever.

The thing about Avenging is that it’s an all-hours and all-weather kind of job.

“This,” Clint says, “Is great.”

He should probably be used to this. Not because he’s been working in inclement conditions for most of his life, but because Thor is a weather system in his own right. On the other hand - Thor’s weather isn’t usually aimed at him.

Fighting a literal storm with a bow and arrow? Not something Clint can recommend, it turns out.

“Are you clear?” Natasha asks. She, like him, has left the battle royale to their more supernatural teammates in favour of evacuating the buildings in the warpath. It’s even harder than it usually is, because downtown Boston is currently the centre of a localised flood zone. 

“I’m on the roof currently,” Clint replies. “Thankfully there’s no one out here watching. I’ve always wondered what it would take to make the gawkers duck and cover, and now I can die happy knowing the answer is fist-sized hailstones.”

“Get inside, now,” Natasha orders.

That’s not a voice that Clint ever questions, never mind disobeys. He’s already turning and running for the door when he realises why she’s given that order. “Holy shit!”

He’d been facing away from the girl - mutant girl...mutant woman? The person causing all of this  _ weather _ , anyway - but he abruptly realises that was a stupid idea due to the incoming  _ tornado. _

Clint is from Iowa. Also, he travelled through Tornado Alley a lot growing up. Turns out that the constant threat of tornadoes is still a hell of a lot less scary than one heading directly towards his extremely precarious current location.

He hammers across the roof and bursts through the access door, throwing himself down the first flight of stairs. Never in his life has a skyscraper seemed so incredibly fragile - he suspects bombs and giant alien creatures from another dimension probably have nothing on the destructive power of nature.

“Bucky!” he shouts as he runs, because Bucky is somewhere in this building/death trap too, hopefully closer to ground level than Clint -

“Here!” he hears, in stereo from his earpiece and aloud, of fucking  _ course _ . 

“Fuck,” Clint gasps, skidding on his heel as he abruptly changes direction to follow that voice. One of the apartment doors is hanging open, and Clint finds Bucky with a kid on his shoulders and one on his hip, holding the hand of a young woman as well.

“They’re deaf,” Bucky explains, handing one of the kids - a toddler of about three, all huge eyes and frightened quiet - to Clint. “Didn’t hear the sirens, and there’s no goddamn emergency lights in this building-”

“Doesn’t matter now, go go go,” Clint says, taking the lead. He can  _ feel _ the tornado now, a low rumbling threat shaking the windows in their frames.

They take the stairs down as fast as they can. It’s not fast enough, and both of them know it, and if the woman doesn’t know it too then Clint will eat his bow. Even deaf, she can probably almost make out the rest of the team yelling at each other through Clint’s earpiece.

They’ve only made it down five floors when the yelling ceases, and Natasha, abruptly calm, says, “Hawkeye, take cover.”

Clint knows what that means. As soon as he’s on a landing he crouches, swinging his toddler-burden into the shelter of his body. A split second later Bucky is beside him, pushing the woman and second kid into the lee of the stairs, pressing his shoulder to Clint’s and making a wall of their backs.

It sounds like a truck hits the building - or maybe a fleet of trucks. Outside the stairwell, glass shatters loud enough even Clint hears it. And secondary to the sound is the feeling of the building swaying distinctly on its base with a great grinding shudder. It feels terribly wrong.

Well, of all the ways to go, ‘in a building levelled by a magic tornado’ was very low on Clint’s list. On the upside, Bucky’s right here with him. Clint would, of course, prefer that Bucky was safe and not in a tornado, but, failing that, beside Clint is the best place him.

The building rocks again. There’s a roar like the end of the world, and Clint thinks  _ this is it, damn _ , and throws an arm over the back of his head. His fingers hit Bucky’s, who at the same time has raised his arm over  _ Clint’s  _ head - idiot - but that’s okay, too, because Clint holds on hard.

Everything goes dark as the lights die. The roar, somehow, gets louder. Clint might yell, might not, honestly can’t tell over the rending noise that fills his ears. He tastes concrete dust, and bits of debris bounce off his back.

Then, the sound, the shaking - it all stops.

Clint coughs a bit. When he blinks his eyes open, it’s light.

“Jesus H. fuckin’ Christ,” Bucky says, but instead of horrified he sounds...awed. 

Clint looks to him, and then follows his eyes up - to the sky, brilliantly blue, where the floor above them used to be.

There’s a whoop in Clint’s ear that breaks the breathless moment. Natasha says, “She’s down. And so’s the tornado.”

“Oh good,” Clint says, somewhat breathlessly. “Was worried that was just the eye.”

“We’ve got civilians here,” Bucky says, sitting up. “Falcon, they could use a lift out.”

“You just don’t want to walk the rest of the way down the stairs,” Sam replies, but he’s amused. “Be right there.”

Clint helps the woman sit up and lets her hug her kids to her, quickly signing  _ we’re safe now _ . Her eyes instantly well up, but she smiles and grips one of his hands in thanks.

There’s a much quieter roar, and then Sam soars over the edge of the building and drops lightly onto the steps above them. They jut out into mid air, the next flight up ripped away along with the rest of the building. He looks around, and then at Clint and Bucky, shaking his head.

“Only you two,” he says.

They get the three civilians harnessed up and watch as Sam very carefully manoeuvres them up into the air. It’s not their SOP to evacuate like that, but Clint breathes a sigh of relief as soon as their weight lifts off of the building and into the air. It’s not feeling anything like stable.

He bumps Bucky’s shoulder, shaking with adrenaline. “Hey. We lived.”

“Someone up there likes us,” Bucky says absently. He looks a little shaken himself.

“Or feels sorry for us,” Clint counters, and throws an arm around him. “Either way, I’ll take it.”


	22. friendly fire

Clint is well accustomed to stupid accidents, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t piss him off. Especially when they’re not his fault.

“You should have been more careful,” Nat is saying, or something to that effect, for the fortieth time.

“He shouldn’t have been in the way,” Bucky replies, or something along those lines, also for the fortieth time.

“You should both shut up,” Clint mutters into the couch. He’s been quiet so far, but oh god he’s sick of listening to them. “Thanks.”

Predictably, this distracts them. A warm hand strokes the back of his head. “Thought you were asleep.”

“Nothing more relaxing than listening to you two arguing,” Clint replies. He shimmies a bit. “De-ice-pack me.”

“You need-”

“I need food,” Clint says. “Let me up.”

“I’ll get something. Don’t move,” Nat says in her business-voice. It sounds like her normal voice except for the hidden threat if he doesn’t follow her order.

Clint groans. “ _ Please _ no more ice pack.”

Bucky takes it off, probably because he knows Clint will do it himself if he doesn’t. Clint sighs when his shoulder and upper back are finally freed.

“Now I get why people start running when Steve throws that frisbee around,” he mutters. “Hey, did it leave an imprint?”

Bucky’s finger traces across his bare back in a distinct arc. The touch is so light he shivers.

“Are you cold?” Bucky asks. With Nat gone he’s quieter, turned inwards. Clint doesn’t like it much.

“Nah,” Clint says, even though he kind of is, a little. He’s not surprised when the throw off the back of the couch settles over him.

He turns his head so he can see Bucky where he’s kneeling beside the couch. “Thanks honey.” Pet-names are Bucky’s thing, not his, but if Bucky’s going to tuck him in...

Bucky raises an eyebrow at him. “Least I can do.”

“Nah,” Clint tells him, and winks. “I shouldn’t have been in the way.”

“I already know you aren’t going to say that when Natasha comes back, so fuck you preemptively,” Bucky replies. Well, Clint wanted him to lose the quiet, and now he’s got it. He grins. “What’re you smirking for, punk?”

“I just like you,” Clint replies. “Even when you throw Captain America’s shield at me during training.”

Bucky opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “Duck next time.”


	23. self-sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmmmm....sorry?
> 
> TW: mind control.

It comes over him shivering, slow. Less like cold, and more like the embodiment of inertia. Familiar in the worst way as it takes control.

He remembers the scepter, and the peace afterwards. It wasn’t until he came out of the thrall that he even understood the magnitude of what he’d done. This isn’t like that - he’s present completely, in the driver’s seat of a bus with the brakes and steering cut.

Against his will, his mouth opens, and he laughs. It’s echoed eerily by a half-dozen familiar voices through his headpiece, all laughing in time.

Then, Bucky says, “What the fuck?”

Then, he says, “ _ Fuck _ .”

Clint’s hands open, his bow clattering onto the asphalt. He turns on his heel and starts to walk, past the arbitrary frontlines, robots streaming past him towards the innocent civilians he’s meant to be protecting. Internally, he shouts and struggles - physically, his breath doesn’t even hitch. 

He’s walking straight to Doom, whose weird shield has prevented anyone from getting at him. By the silence in his ear - bar Bucky, though he’s not speaking now either - Clint knows he’s unlikely to be the only one.

There’s a rush of movement at his back, and then Clint’s momentum is halted by a hand on his shoulder.

He doesn’t even have time to try and stop. He turns and strikes out, landing a closed fist right on Bucky’s nose. There’s a crunch of cartilage breaking, and then he’s face down on the street, arm held tight behind his back.

“It’s okay, Clint,” Bucky says, a little thickly, his weight keeping Clint down. “You’re okay.”

Clint’s not okay. Every inch of him is  _ crawling. _ It gets worse when his mouth opens to say, “Interesting.”

“You hear me?” Bucky demands. “Let them go.”

“I don’t think I will,” Doom says through Clint - and, Clint realises, through the others as well. “Why aren’t you under the thrall?”

“Either I’m smarter’n you, or my brain’s special,” Bucky replies. “Probably both.”

Usually back-talking bad guys is Clint’s thing, not Bucky’s. Doom doesn’t seem to like it much, by the way Clint, against his own will, raises his head and then brings it down against the asphalt of the street. Hard. 

Bucky lets him go instantly, rolling back and out of reach. Clint, not feeling the pain but knowing it’s there and probably bad, is on his feet and moving again.

“I could have him destroy himself on you,” his mouth says conversationally. “But I find I’m interested in you. For now. Come along, unless you want to see what I can make him do to himself.”

Doom’s shield is in the middle of a crosswalk on 5th Avenue, glowing electric green. Doom is standing inside it, hands on his hips, perfectly relaxed while they’ve all be sweating and fighting. Clint  _ hates _ him, virulently and suddenly, and he hopes Doom can feel the waves of that.

There’s a whine, and Iron Man crashes less gracefully than usual into a three-point landing, cratering the street. He doesn’t straighten, the suit rigid and hunched. Cap is next, his gait distinctly alien. Clint can’t tell if that’s Doom or if it’s Steve fighting.

It’s answered when he has to watch Steve take a knee, right there in the street, for some dickwad robot-fucker. Not that he has to just watch - he’s next, dropping onto both knees even less gracefully, like a puppet with the strings cut.

“What do you want with them?” Bucky demands from behind Clint.

“Entertainment,” Doom replies, and they all echo him. “I haven’t decided on the particulars, yet.”

There’s a scuff, and Bucky halts at Clint’s shoulder. Clint can’t look up at him, but he feels Bucky’s hand fall to his neck and squeeze, rattling his quiver a little.

“I’m sure you’ve got a great imagination,” Bucky says, and he sounds condescending as  _ hell _ . “Honestly, it’s about time you came up with something that wasn’t ‘robots, robots, and more robots’.”

Doom’s head tilts, his amusement wobbling dangerously. “You dare speak like that to Doctor Doom?”

“Guess so,” Bucky replies. “You know, I never had much respect for men who hide behind shields and send soldiers out to fight their battles. Even if the soldiers _ are _ robots.”

“So says history’s toy soldier.”

“Yeah. I would know.” Bucky walks past Clint, up to the edge of the shield. “This little mind-control trick is cute, but how long can you keep it up? I mean, you couldn’t even get all of us. Nazis managed to get in my head, but you can’t.”

“Do not try my patience,” Doom warns. “I have control of your friends. Do you think you could fight them? Finish them? You are  _ weak _ . You’ll let them kill you rather than hurt them. I know your kind.”

“Doesn’t sound weak to me,” Bucky replies. “But, like I said - you didn’t get all of us.”

There’s a whistling shriek of displaced air and engine-noise, and Falcon flies over, his shadow arcing across the street. He drops something that Clint thinks must be a bomb, until the comm in his ear fizzles to death, Tony’s suit darkens and locks up, and the shield pauses, just for a moment -

\- and Bucky, who was beside the shield, is now inside it, holding up a hand with a red-flashing thing in it, and Clint has a split-second to think that pattern looks a whole lot like the explosive arrowheads he uses -

\- before it explodes.

Just like that, Clint’s body is back in his control, and if he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have fallen with the immediacy of it. He's back, and his entire world is blindness and pain. And the word he’s thinking, screaming internally, bursts out of his mouth. 

“ _ Bucky! _ ”

There’s no answer. Nothing but smoke.


	24. drowning

Mostly, despite everything, Bucky is okay. But sometimes, he’s drowning.

It’s the unpredictability that gets to him - that sometimes he’s fine, and other times he could swear he’s breathing water. The list of little slights to his senses that are sometimes okay and sometimes triggers that abruptly catapult him into a downward spiral. That, sometimes, there isn’t even that.

He wakes up, inhales, doesn’t move. Couldn’t if he wanted to. Wishes he could go back to sleep, or maybe just stop existing, for probably longer than his therapist would like. Fuck,  _ he _ doesn’t like it. Doesn’t mean he can stop.

He - goes away, after a while. Not sleep, not even misery, just total disembodiment. An old thing from his Soldier days, a kind of waiting so complete it’s something else entirely.

It’s touch that brings him back eventually, gentle enough that he knows there’s nothing to fight. Fingers on his cheeks and over his hair. Voice, too - Clint saying his name.

He opens his eyes. It’s still dim, the curtains drawn, and the bed is body-warm and a little stale. His heart rate picks up with the jitters of  _ where-was-I-how-long-did-I-lose _ , but it’s easier to shake off when Clint’s face is right there, expression soft.

“Hey,” Clint murmurs. “Come back to me.”

“‘M here,” Bucky breathes. He can barely get the words out, but it’s worth it for the little smile it earns him.

“Can you eat something?”

Bucky looks at him helplessly. He wants to say yes, but he has no appetite and no energy either. He almost does it anyway for the little line between Clint’s eyebrows, even though it disappears after a second.

“It’s okay,” he tells Bucky. “Can I hold you?”

“You’ve got,” Bucky starts. “Stuff.” Responsibilities, both of them have them, and he knows Clint will have cancelled Bucky’s for him, even if it was just running with Steve and afternoon training with the team. Clint’s work as a team leader means he always has things to do even when they’re not on active missions.

“No I don’t,” Clint replies.

“Young Avengers,” Bucky points out. 

“I’m not going to leave you,” Clint says, like it’s obvious, like he’s a little puzzled that Bucky is even bringing it up. Bucky has to breathe through that like there’s water bubbling at the back of his mouth. Half of him thinks  _ thank god _ . The other half thinks  _ how long will this last? _ Because maybe this will never let up, maybe this time is the beginning of the end, and not even Clint is loyal enough to stay here with Bucky and just rot.

“Long as you need me, I’ll be here,” Clint continues, like he can read Bucky’s thoughts. “I’d cancel a hundred training sessions for you. A thousand.”

He sounds like he’s telling the truth, but Bucky knows much more about a thousand days than Clint does. Either way, Bucky doesn’t have the energy to fight him. He closes his eyes.

“Let me hold you,” Clint says, and at Bucky’s nod he wraps himself around Bucky’s uncooperative body. The feeling of skin on skin is a better anchor than anything else.

Clint can’t keep his head above water - only Bucky can do that. That doesn’t mean Bucky can’t draw strength from him the same way he does body heat, and breathe.


	25. restraints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK AGAIN
> 
> (I got distracted but now I'm here and ready to smash these out)
> 
> TW for injury, blood, medical stuff.

There are lots of objectively not-great parts about Clint’s job, but at least he’s not a medic.

Maybe non-Avengers medics have easier jobs in that their patients aren’t superpowered, but Clint honestly doubts it. Non-superpowered people can still be assholes even in the face of professional medical care. 

However, they can’t break your bones without even trying. 

“Cap, do the medics need me?” Clint asks over comms, aware he sounds like he’s speaking through his teeth and not caring much. 

“Negative. Keep your position,” Steve replies evenly. It’s not the first time Clint has asked, but Steve doesn’t sound even slightly irritated. Clint wishes he could say the same.

Someone took Bucky’s comm off, which is the only reason Clint hasn’t gone against orders and gone to him anyway. As it is, he listens with one ear to the quick and level chatter of the medical team on site mixing terms he knows with ones he doesn’t amidst the orders and the chaos of the fight.

And shoots things with arrows. Lucky he’s good at multitasking. 

“Ask Banner-” someone says, and then, “Shit!” There’s a dulled-by-distance clattering in the background like a box of instruments has been overturned. “It’s okay, Barnes. It’s -  _ ulk _ !”

“Fuck it,” Clint mutters, mostly to himself. He’s always been of the belief to ask forgiveness than permission, which is why he knocks a grappling arrow and just throws himself over the edge of the building.

“ _ Clint _ ,” Steve says, though he doesn’t sound surprised even a little bit. 

Clint’s careful shot means he swings down across the street almost close enough for his boots to brush the asphalt. The arc of it dispels his momentum so that when he cuts the line at the top, he drops straight down - a way. It won’t bruise much. Also, as a method of transportation, no one can argue it isn’t efficient, and right now he’s kind of in a hurry.

He runs more than jogs to the med-team’s location, noting Tony is hovering above as air support to keep the ground around them clear. That’s lucky, because it seems like they have their hands full with their patient.

Clint hadn’t expected so much blood.

Also, that dirty cheater Captain America is already in the thick of it. At first Clint can only see his broad back, but then as he shoulders in he realises, with dawning horror, that Steve is  _ holding Bucky down _ .

“You’re meant to be in position,” Steve says, grit-jawed, with that freaky precognition thing of his seeing as he definitely can’t see Clint. 

“Fuck that,” Clint snarls back. “What are you  _ doing _ ?”

“Get in here and help me,” Steve snaps. “He’s been fighting, won’t snap out of it-”

Even as Steve says that, Bucky surges against his grip so hard Steve jolts. Clint sees his back bow violently and is on his knees beside him a second later.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve says, tone patient and not at all giving away that he’s gripping white-knuckled on to each of Bucky’s wrists. “You’re alright.”

“He’s lacerated his femoral artery,” a medic with a bruised neck tells Clint without looking up from her work. “So either help me or help Cap or get out of here.”

She’s even more commanding than Cap. Clint looks at what she’s doing -  _ Jesus _ \- realises he’s of no use to her, and then crouches at Bucky’s shoulder. His head is pressing back into the pavement, though someone has tried to cushion it with a jacket.

Clint can’t hold Bucky down. Instead, he pushes his fingers into Bucky’s sweat-damp hair, gently combing through it. “It’s okay, baby. Let them work, huh? You don’t gotta fight them.”

He’s prepared for it to make no difference that he’s here, so he’s pretty stunned when Bucky turns into his touch and the painful rigidity in his body eases a little. 

“That’s it. That’s good.” He keeps up the soft touch - he doesn’t want to call it stroking, but if the shoe fits - until Bucky slumps back.

Steve exhales, his grip loosening. “Should I-?”

“If you let go of him now and he breaks these stitches, I will not be responsible for my actions,” the medic replies immediately. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Both of you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve and Clint reply in unison. Someone chuckles tiredly.

“Clint,” Bucky breathes, without opening his eyes. His brow wrinkles discontentedly, and he pulls at Steve’s grip, this time without the feral strength from before. “Lemme go?”

“Not yet, Buck. Sorry,” Clint replies, though not without sharing a pained looked with Steve. “Nearly done, yeah? Just hold on a minute.”

“I need an arm,” a different medic says, tapping Steve’s shoulder. “A unit or two of blood and plasma and he’ll be walking out of here. Well, he could. We’re still going to medevac him as soon as an ambulance can get through.”

“Uh,” Steve says, fumbling his grip.

“Let me,” Clint cuts in, gently batting Steve’s hand aside and pulling Bucky’s arm down to his side, intertwining their fingers. Steve watches carefully but doesn’t interject.

Clint squeezes. “They’re gonna stick a big needle in you, so don’t move.”

This earns him a glare from the medic as he swipes an antiseptic wipe over the crook of Bucky’s elbow. “It’s not a big needle, Barnes. But the part about not moving does stand.”

“Uh huh,” Bucky mumbles, squeezing Clint’s fingers back.


	26. broken ribs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do any of you ever wonder if I really know how whump works??? 
> 
> This? Soft.

Ribs are stupid bones. That’s Clint’s theory, and he’s sticking with it.

The only bones he’s broken more often are fingers, and even if that’s a pain in the goddamned ass, it’s still nowhere near as bad as broken ribs. He can’t _breathe_ without it hurting. Lifting anything heavier than a mug of coffee? Off the agenda for the foreseeable future. He’s just going to lie here and wait for his stupid useless bones to heal.

“Sure thing, sugar,” Bucky replies absently.

“Wha?” Clint mumbles into his blanket. It’s fuzzy and warm and the only good thing that’s happened to him so far today.

“You’re going to lie here and wait for yourself to heal,” Bucky says like he’s quoting, which, whoops, Clint hadn’t realised he was talking aloud.

Bonus of breaking his ribs these days is that they give him the good drugs. Great for his pain levels and sanity, if not his brain-to-mouth filter.

“Yes,” Clint grumps. “Yes I am.”

“Fine by me,” Bucky says, and pats Clint’s leg through the blanket. Well, his ass, actually. Even split whether he was aiming for it or not.

“Are you conde...condeschh...condescending to me?” Clint demands abruptly.

“Am I what?” Bucky asks. “Wait, hang on.” The blanket lifts away from Clint’s face, leaving him blinking at the light. Bucky is leaning over him, arm braced on the back of the couch so he doesn’t put any weight on Clint. He’s nice like that.

“You’re nice,” Clint tells him. His face is nice. So’s the rest of him, actually. Mean-looking and kinda grumpy, but soft like candy floss in the middle.

“...thanks?”

“Cover me up,” Clint says. Bucky’s eyes are nice (all of him is nice) but Clint doesn’t have much control over his own face right now. Aw, it’s probably all sappy.

Bucky huffs a tiny laugh. “You gonna suffocate?”

“No. Not m’blanket.” It’s too soft and good to cut off his oxygen. Clint has to go back on what he thought - said? - earlier about it being the only good thing that’s happened to him today, though. Bucky keeps being here and keeps happening to Clint, and that’s pretty amazing too.

“You know what? Sure.” Bucky gently folds the blanket back over Clint’s face, scruffing Clint’s hair for a second on the way past. “You’re a sweetheart when you’re doped up, by the way.”

“‘M sweet,” Clint says. “You’re sweet. Gonna sleep now.”

“Best idea you’ve had all day,” Bucky says, and the warmth in his voice follows Clint down into his doze.


	27. "I can't walk"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ........whump-cember??

The thing about being an Avenger is that it’s a dangerous job. Clint really thinks that this goes without saying.

Bucky apparently doesn’t agree, because he’s been yelling at Clint for a while now. Clint’s mostly tuning it out, though not as much of it as he’d like. Words keep filtering through - words like ‘reckless’ and ‘irresponsible’ and ‘suicidal’.

It’s - it’s not true. The job means walking the line between success and sacrifice, and also having a very clear understanding of which is which. You don’t last long on the team if you’re tilting towards the latter, because you’ll end up off the roster and in therapy before Captain America can tell you twice.

Clint knows Bucky is just scared. That doesn’t really make him feel better about the yelling, though. Especially when the word ‘stupid’ breaks through like a slap in the face.

“Bucky,” he says, and then, because he’s tired and kind of an asshole, “Give me a fucking break.”

Unsurprisingly, this does not go down well. Bucky’s face, which had been flushed and impassioned and furious, closes down. Then, he turns to leave.

That’s not what Clint wants. He wants Bucky to sit in the uncomfortable chair next to the bed and rest his feet on the mattress by Clint’s hip and talk with him and maybe hold his hand and scavenge him some proper food. He doesn’t want Bucky to leave. He doesn’t want to be alone. “Hey!”

“I’m done,” Bucky snaps. “You - if you’re gonna kill yourself, I’m not gonna stick around and watch it happen.”

He’s scared, Clint reminds himself. He’s afraid, and Clint shouldn’t hold that against him. He tries, but mostly he’s just pissed. “I can’t follow you, asshole! I can’t walk!”

“I don’t want you to,” Bucky replies flatly, and slams the door behind him.

Fuck.

Clint is casted from toes to mid-thigh, just had a shoulder relocated, and pulled a shitload of the muscles in his back. He definitely can’t walk. He may or may not be able to get out of bed unassisted, and he certainly isn’t meant to. All of this means precisely jackshit in his sudden burning desire to yell at Bucky himself for being an ass and then  _ leaving _ .

He rolls to the edge of the mattress so he doesn’t have to sit up, pushing himself with his good arm onto his good leg. It’s pretty painful, but he ends up most of the way upright, if a little hunched over. Then, he hops.

The medical staff have gotten slack since he started dating Bucky and therefore became much easier to keep in a hospital bed. There hasn’t been much point Clint leaving when the person he most wants to be with won’t leave his side (or let him leave AMA, for that matter). There’s no one hovering outside his room waiting for him to make a break for it, and it’s easy enough to circumnavigate the nurses at their station.

Well, easy for people with two good legs. The elevator is in full view of the station, so he slips through the stairwell door instead. It’s not until he’s standing on the landing that he considers the likelihood of him breaking his  _ other  _ leg trying to hop down the stairs.

Thankfully, he only has a split second to think about it before he looks down to the next landing and realises that Bucky hasn’t actually gone that far. 

He’s leaning his spine against the concrete wall, head tilted back and hands pressed to his eyes. The shape of him is all wrong, too small and shaken.

Clint’s not sounding too firm himself when he says, “Bucky?”

Bucky jerks, his hands falling away from his face. “Clint! Fuck sake!”

He takes the stairs up to Clint three at a time, hands catching Clint’s upper arms and steadying him when he hadn’t even realised he’d been swaying. “You shouldn’t be outta bed-”

Clint wriggles out of his grip, but only so he can wrap his good arm around Bucky’s shoulders and lean into him. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

Bucky stiffens, then relaxes, his palms rising to press against Clint’s aching back. He sighs. “You’re insane.”

“Sure,” Clint agrees into his neck. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“What?” 

“Die,” Clint says, and then reconsiders. His job  _ is  _ dangerous. “Not without a real good reason.”

“You,” Bucky starts, and then sighs again, holding Clint tighter to himself. “I know that.”

“I’m always gonna do my best to come back to you,” Clint says, and that’s a big promise, bigger than any he’s made to Bucky before, but he means it in a bright and certain way, all clarity. Figures he’d have that kind of moment in a stairwell.

“I know that, too,” Bucky replies, cupping the back of Clint’s head. “Sorry I yelled.”

“‘S fine.” Well, it’s mostly fine, except for how, now the emotions and adrenaline are fading, Clint’s feeling pretty...not great. “Hey, y’know that thing about not being in bed…?”

“You know that thing about you being ‘fine’?” Bucky responds, though he sounds almost amused now. “C’mon, Hawkeye.”

He doesn’t princess-carry Clint, if only because Clint point-blank refuses to be carried on grounds of embarrassment and being too tall for it anyway. They instead do an awkward imitation of a three-legged race back to Clint’s room, Bucky muttering the whole time under his breath. By the time Clint is lowered back into the bed, he sighs and flops onto the pillows, exhausted.

“You better not leave,” he threatens, even though it probably loses some of the effect now his eyelids feel like they’ve got little lead weights attached.

“What, so you can follow me again, hopalong?” Bucky says, and Clint hears more than sees the familiar sounds of him kicking his boots off and taking his usual seat. When the mattress squashes down at his side, he smiles.


End file.
